KITTERY, Maine — There are thousands of tractor-trailer trucks on the roads in Maine. As part of an international event, Maine State Police are cracking down on inspections at certain weigh stations across the state, to keep everyone safe and prevent a tragedy.
"We are here to do this in the spring right before summer traffic hits, looking over all the equipment, making sure we can make the commercial vehicle safe as possible on the Maine roads," Lieutenant Aaron Hayden said.
It's called "International Road Check for Commercial Vehicles." Hayden said it's the largest road check in North America.
In Kittery, Hayden said truck drivers know they need to pull over. Once they do, he said technology underground tells police if the trucks need to be checked.
"In the ground is a set of scales that will weigh them and there is also a tire pressure sensor monitoring system and that will let us know if they have a low tire somewhere," Hayden said.
Police are also looking to see if driver licenses and registrations are up to date.
Over the three-day event, May 4-6, police have done more than 950 inspections and issued roughly 1,000 violations.
Police found one truck's trailer had two brakes that weren't working and one flat tire.
"It could have been a tragedy. A lot of people don't understand what we are doing here. We're not just enforcing the law, we're keeping the roads safe for the general public," Trooper Shane Northrup said.
If a truck ignores the signs to pull over, police said there is technology in place to catch up with drivers later.
"We would try and stop them and try and figure out why they missed the scale. Could be something as simple as they couldn't get over in time," Hayden said.
Thursday is the last day they are doing this as a special event, but police do this all year long, inspecting 15,000 commercial vehicles.