Change in enforcement

Inspections that DPS officers were conducting on commercial vehicles came under scrutiny three years ago when Lt. Col. Jack Hegarty issued an order in February 2010 barring highway patrol officers from conducting “administrative stops,” which do not require probable cause and are frequently used around the country to pull over commercial trucks and check driver hours and log books for safety violations.

Critics predicted the changes would lead to more wrecks involving trucks and more deaths.

But concern about a spike in wrecks did not bear out in the year the order came down, or the following year, with the number of crashes involving trucks and buses remaining virtually unchanged. However, fatal wrecks involving large trucks increased from five in 2010 to 16 in 2011.

Hegarty was demoted in late 2011and ultimately left the agency. His administrative-stop order has been rescinded.

“Administrative stops are authorized

Records reveal problems

The company Sandoval was driving for has a spotty history.

RT Inc., a California-based trucking company, was subject to 28 inspections in the past two years, according to records kept by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The safety concerns that investigators found were serious enough for the company’s trucks to be placed “out of service” following more than 23 percent of those inspections. Its drivers were placed “out of service” in more than 7 percent of those inspections. Both categories exceed the national average, according to the Department of Transportation.

The company’s record of vehicle maintenance also “exceeds the intervention threshold,” according to the federal records, which means their trucks can be prioritized for roadside intervention or inspection, according to the Department of Transportation.

Arepresentative from RT Inc. did not respond to a request for comment.

Tracking Munoz’s history is more problematic: Specialty Distribution, the Oklahoma-based shipping company he was driving for, was established in October and has not yet had inspections that are recorded in federal databases.

Munoz’s prior equipment violations would remain on the records of the company he was driving for at the time, but court records do not indicate the company’s name.