Maintenance & inspection
What is a walkaround check?
A walkaround check is the driver's inspection of a vehicle before it is used, covering the items that can be seen from outside and inside the cab. Defects found must be reported, and a nil defect result recorded.
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<img src="https://fleetoptix.co.uk/glossary/walkaround-check/diagram.svg" alt="walkaround check — diagram from FleetOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://fleetoptix.co.uk/glossary/walkaround-check">What is a walkaround check?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://fleetoptix.co.uk">FleetOptix</a>
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</figure>It is a first-use check rather than a daily one in the calendar sense: the point is that no vehicle is driven on a public road before someone has looked at it that day, including after a changeover between drivers.
Recording a nil result matters as much as recording a defect. A gap in the record is indistinguishable, to an examiner, from a check that never happened, and the whole value of the system is that it shows a continuous chain of someone looking.
The check belongs to the driver, which is the point of it. A defect reported by the person who will drive the vehicle is reported by the person most likely to notice it and most affected by it being ignored.
What goes wrong in practice
- A week of identical nil-defect sheets completed in one sitting, which is obvious on sight and treated as falsification.
- Defects reported verbally to a fitter and never written down, leaving no record that the defect existed or was rectified.
- No record of the rectification against the original report, so the paper trail shows a fault raised and nothing closing it.
- Checks skipped on a changeover because the vehicle 'has already been checked today' by the previous driver.