Another week, another round of scheduled chain checks on the I-70 mountain corridor shows most truckers are traveling with the chains they need for snowy roads.
On March 11, Colorado State Patrol partnered with seven agencies from Lakewood to Silt. They stopped 225 commercial motor vehicles and wrote just six tickets for violating the chain law. That’s a rate of 2%, the lowest in three weeks of scheduled inspections.
- Total vehicles stopped… 297
- CMVs stopped… 225
- Total tickets… 62
- Speeding tickets… 33
- CMV chain compliance citations… 6
- Other CMV tickets… 9
The next scheduled chain check is Thursday, March 20.
Results from week one (Feb. 27).
Results from week two (March 5).
Polis on chains
Gov. Jared Polis tells the Vail Daily he supports steeper fines for truckers who violate chain laws and cause big backups, but he needs lawmakers to write the bill first.
State Sen. Dylan Roberts, of Frisco, says that is news to him, but he welcomes anything that will help with hours-long backups on snowy I-70. Vail mayor Travis Coggin has floated the idea of a $20,000 fine for truckers who stop traffic, and has now directed town staff to write an emergency ordinance letting Vail police stop and inspect any CMV passing through town limits.
There is no pending state bill for new CMV fines, although Roberts is sponsor of a bill that would let third-party vendors sell chains at chain-up stations, modeled after similar laws on the West Coast.