The Park City Police Department and the Utah Highway Patrol conducted a mid-April operation targeting truck safety, with nearly half of the inspected vehicles being removed from service based on violations discovered during the effort.
The operation occurred during the morning of April 16. Police Department logs indicated the trucks were generally stopped along the Kearns Boulevard corridor, including near the Park City School District campus.
The logs provided limited details. In one case at 8:29 a.m., the stopped vehicle was a dump truck that was towing a flatbed. Another case at 11:58 a.m. involved a dump truck without a license plate, according to the logs. The police in two cases stopped drivers whose vehicles had been inspected earlier in the day.
The Police Department released statistics from the operation that included:
- 18 trucks were inspected.
- 8 were removed from service.
- 1 driver was removed from service.
- 100 combined violations.
- 26 combined violations that were serious enough to remove the vehicles from service.
In a prepared response to a Park Record inquiry about the operation, Danielle Snelson, a Police Department lieutenant, said the operation was “focused on improving roadway safety through commercial vehicle inspections.”
“Officers inspected trucks and trailers for compliance with state and federal safety standards. Certain violations can result in a vehicle being placed out of service, including poorly adjusted brakes, improper load securement, an unqualified or improperly licensed driver, or unsafe equipment such as flat tires,” she said.
Snelson added: “These proactive efforts help identify potential issues before they lead to crashes and keep all motorists safer on our roads.”
Images provided by the Police Department showed the operation unfolding in the parking lot at Park City High School, with the authorities checking tires during two of the inspections.
The inspections were timed during the early weeks of the traditional building season in Park City. Construction traffic typically increases in the summer and fall along the entryways and through the neighborhoods where work is occurring.
The safety of construction vehicles has long been of note in Park City. The condition of the brakes has been of special concern in a community with so many streets having steep grades.
There has been a series of accidents in Park City over the decades involving trucks headed to or from construction sites, with many having been blamed on brake failures on steep streets. The section of S.R. 224 south of Old Town, also known as the Mine Road, is notorious for brake failures. Some of those accidents have been serious, and a runaway-truck ramp was constructed on the road years ago.
One of the accidents, in the summer of 2021, involved a dump truck crashing into two cars in the area of the Old Town roundabout. The brakes failed before the accident, the Utah Highway Patrol said at the time. Park City Fire District images from that scene showed the truck had struck a stone wall and suffered extensive damage to the front.