Ok .... A Police officer is going to go forward at his or her own discretion depending on how they see the situation . They put there eyes & ears on it and make a decision like anyone else would .
That all being said ........ Lets say a customer drives up to my shop for a DOT inspection . I crawl over & under the truck & say you got a broken spring on the right rear axil and a wheel seal leaking on the left side . Customer pays me for the inspection and asks me when I can work him in for repairs . I tell him next week .
Ok ....... should I call the Police and report my customer for driving a truck that wont pass a DOT inspection ?
Fair point and I do see where you are coming from. If I could offer a couple of examples that I know of personally, I realise that laws and attitudes vary between our two countries.
The first example relates to how a business, part of a national chain in fact, specialising in light vehicle suspensions would handle a similar situation. Their policy is that if a vehicle is found with a serious suspension/brake flaw, that vehicle does not leave until the fault is rectified as they feel that their duty of care would be unfulfilled and they would potentially be open to litigation if an accident were to result. If you push the issue or decide not to rectify the fault, the vehicle will be delivered to your home or another address on a tilt tray truck and your invoice will have written a clear description of the issues and an instruction that the vehicle is unroadworthy and not to be driven etc. The customer must sign this invoice to acknowledge the statement prior to the vehicle being unloaded. What the customer does from that point is their call.
The second example relates to a heavy vehicle mechanical workshop who, if faced with a similar situation will not sign off on the vehicle safety check they perform on every vehicle that enters their workshop and you will be informed that the vehicle is unsafe to operate until such time as repairs are made. Once again the operator of the vehicle must sign off on the document to show acknowledgement of the caution.
Increasingly we are seeing the whole chain being investigated in the event of a heavy vehicle accident, including management and mechanics. There was a case recently where an entire fleet of trucks and trailers - 100+ units, were put off the road due to an accident with one of their trucks. Preliminary investigations found that maintenance was a foreign concept to this company and nearly every unit had a serious defect of some type as well as the correct documentation not being kept in order to satisfy the national mass accreditation scheme they worked under. Several drivers were charged, (primarily log book offences), along with maintenance supervisors and several directors of the company. Potentially, their sins could cost them their personal assets and even lead to time on the wrong side of the bars.
Heavy vehicles and their operators tend to be judged very harshly by the public and while fault among professional drivers is rare, when it does occur however, the hounds bay for blood. Once upon a time, management were largely insulated from prosecution, as the law placed the onus on the driver. Obviously, that was a flawed state of affairs as the driver needed a job and could easily be forced to drive a vehicle with known defects in order to keep his job. Thankfully now, there is an increase in the culpability of management and a recognition of their responsibility to provide safe equipment and maintain a safe workplace as regards hours worked and rest times.
The days of turning a blind eye, not that I am accusing you of that, have well and truly gone.