In a small meeting room at the University of Sonora Tuesday, the Arizona Department of Transportation's Benjamin Stevens teaches the basics of brake inspections to an audience of several dozen truckers.
“During break inspections, safety comes first,” Stevens told the room.
ADOT has been training Mexican truck drivers how to consistently pass border safety inspections since last year. Now the agency is conducting its first industry-specific training this week.
Such trainings have dramatically reduced how often trucks are taken out of service at the border, according to ADOT numbers. For truckers who have not had the training, roughly 7 percent of crossings result in a truck being taken off the road. That rate for those who complete the training, however, is just .2 percent.
Seeing potential savings in time and money, the maquiladora industry asked the agency to come to Hermosillo. But it’s not just about improving profits, industry representative Gerardo Vazquez told the Fronteras Desk.
“It can help a lot, because it improves the safety conditions through driver training,” he said, adding that ongoing infrastructure projects on major Sonoran highways will also help.
