CVSA Brake Safety Week 2026 results: 2,369 vehicles out of service, half under the 20% brake rule

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance released the results Nov. 6. The out-of-service rate was 15.3%, and 13,159 vehicles (84.7%) had no brake violation serious enough to park them, according to the CVSA figures reported by TheTrucker.com. In the U.S. alone, inspectors parked 2,134 of 14,165 vehicles, or 15.1%, about the same as in 2025, Heavy Duty Trucking reported. Ninety-one percent of the checks were full Level I inspections.

The most common reason was the 20% criterion of the North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria: when at least one in five service brakes on a vehicle or combination has an out-of-service defect, the unit is parked. That rule accounted for 1,176 vehicles, or 49.6% of those put out of service. Inspectors also wrote 600 violations for brake hoses and tubing, 145 for air loss, 92 for steering axle linings, 119 for other steering axle problems and 759 for other parts, among them parking brakes, air tanks, low-air warning devices and the tractor protection system. One vehicle can carry several violations.

This year's focus was drums and rotors: 141 violations and 64 vehicles out of service. Rusted rotors led with 48, followed by 36 broken drums, 33 broken rotors and 24 cases of metal-to-metal contact, according to Heavy Duty Trucking, which said all the broken drums were on S-cam brakes. Twelve U.S. jurisdictions ran 657 vehicles over performance-based brake testers, and 29 of them fell below the 43.5% minimum braking efficiency that federal rules require.

The next Brake Safety Week runs April 18 to 24, 2027, earlier than the usual late-August slot and ahead of International Roadcheck in May, Overdrive reported.