Inspection & Violation Trends Analysis

Analysis

· as of May 28, 2026

The sharpest pattern in this dataset is not the well-watched vehicle out-of-service rate, which has remained broadly stable, but the sustained acceleration in driver out-of-service rates beginning in spring 2025. The driver OOS rate was 4.68% in April 2023 and held near that level through early 2025, then climbed to 6.34% in April 2025, 7.12% in July 2025, and 7.15% in August 2025 before partially easing to 6.56% in January 2026. That July–August 2025 peak represents a rate roughly 43% above the 2023 baseline for the same months. Vehicle OOS rates over the same period moved within a much narrower range, running between roughly 14.5% and 16.1% through mid-2025, consistent with the longer-run pattern in the data. The divergence between driver and vehicle OOS trends is the clearest compositional story in the series: whatever is driving more OOS events is concentrated in driver-related violations rather than equipment defects.

Inspection volumes rose through 2025, with July 2025 reaching 269,615 total inspections, compared to 215,758 in July 2023, a year-over-two-year increase of roughly 25%. The violation rate, however, has been relatively flat across the full period, moving within a range of approximately 53.5% to 57.9% with no durable directional trend. The trailing 12-month average violation rate of 56.5% compares to 55.3% in the prior 12-month period, a modest uptick that on its own would not be notable.

The November 2025 data point, with only 104,298 total inspections against roughly 200,000–260,000 in surrounding months, is an outlier that likely reflects partial or delayed reporting rather than a real activity drop; rates for that month appear consistent with adjacent months, which is consistent with an incomplete data pull rather than a behavioral change.

The rise in driver OOS rates is consistent with increased enforcement attention on hours-of-service and driver fitness categories, though the data alone cannot confirm the violation mix driving the change. It may also reflect shifts in the composition of carriers being inspected. Against the full five-year window covering approximately 9.5 million inspections, the current driver OOS rate sits at the high end of the observed range, a meaningful departure from the tight band that characterized 2022 through 2024.