assist in inspection?

If you refused to help, he would place you out of service. Kind of like being between a rock and a hard place.

 

great question.....I wonder how that would go over

Officer "please step on your brake pedal and hold it"
Driver "No....."

 

Out of service for what? The regulations specify what the OOS infractions are, and I have never seen "failure to assist" as one of them. Now if you stand in his way, he could arrest you for obstruction or possibly disorderly conduct....but if you simply get out of his way and allow him to do his inspection without your assistance, I don't see where there would be a problem.

On second thought, when you refuse to assist, he'll call in a second officer to assist. That second officer will sit in your driver's seat and operate the controls you had been asked to operate. Now that the second officer is inside your truck, he's not just going to sit there eyes forward. He's going to have a look around...so I hope you don't have anything "in plain view" for him to find inside your cab. Also, that officer who had to waste time waiting for the 2nd officer to arrive is not going to be as willing to let a minor thing slide. Yup...brace yourself for the nit-pickiest inspection you ever did have, He's going to go over that truck with a fine-tooth comb. Anything even remotely approaching borderline is going to be written up on that inspection form and will subsequently adversely affect your CSA score.

So yeah, you COULD stand there on the side of the road and plead your case that the 5th Amendment prohibits him from FORCING you to be a witness against yourself and therefore you respectfully decline to aid him in performing the inspection....but generally speaking, it isn't a good idea. Save the legal battles for the court room.

 

I'd say that's pretty much it, and he probably won't be nice enough to let anything he finds slide with just a warning either.

 

or worse yet he could wait all day to do anything with your truck because you refuse to assist him,worth the delay? I myself have found that a good attitude and having spare lights will often times give you the opportunity to fix before he finishes report which will result in a clean inspection.We need to remember they have a job to do also and if we do our job correctly they wont have any thing to find on our trucks,but things happen lights burn out wires come loose, your best freind at that time? respect,level head,work with the officer in general just be cool about it.

 

very well said.Don't think I would have said it that nicely.I need to work on that,lol

 

and why would you not want to assist.....

 

You're supposed to log all roadside inspections as on-duty (or at least all the carrier's say so) so you'd better be doing something productive. But to go along with the OP, if our morning PTI was not good enough, and LE wants to do it themselves, then who are we to interfere or get in their way or try and tell them how to do their job? Yes, we could make their job easier, but why should we? We are trained to perform inspections solo and to do a flawless job at it, so why is it too much to ask the chief enforcement mechanism to do their inspection by THEMSELVES? In fact, wouldn't it behoove a trucker to watch and observe the "experts" perform an inspection and look over their shoulder and take notes and ask questions? just sayin.