Have you ever had an uninvited guest over for a visit? Maybe it was because you accidently made it known that you wanted to have him/her over. Maybe you rolled out the red carpet by raising a red flag.
It’s not hard to raise a red flag or even roll out the red carpet for the next available D.O.T. officer to pull you and your rig over for a “random”. All you have to do is have a visible defect or break some kind of rule of the road like speeding, improper lane change, tailgating, running a stop sign or red light. Yes, nothing gets you more attention than demanding attention by doing these crazy things while behind the wheel of a big truck.
It used to be that 33 percent of all roadside inspections were just that, random. The stats were as of two years ago that 34% were for speeding and 33% were for obvious defects. Now that has changed to 4% for randoms 55% for speeding or breaking traffic laws and 41% for visible defects. I guess no one wants to lose when they pull you over, so they are playing with a stacked deck when they “random” you. So, when you get pulled over for a roadside inspection, you are already facing a traffic or equipment charge so the best thing to do is to obey all the traffic laws, right? 
As far as visible defects, it seems like a great pre-trip inspection will keep you out of this kind of trouble. If you do find a defect please get it fixed before you get to a weigh station or if it’s too obvious, try to get your company to send a road service truck to your location before you hit the big road.
If you heart skips a beat and you get nervous when you see this sign then you need to work on your logging and pre-trip inspection skills. Lets keep it clean and legal and we can all keep our jobs.
Just Saying,
Jim
