I suspect the cause has more to do with lack of maintenance. All of those that “can do” have retired or been pushed out and replaced with “equity and inclusive” hires. The new hires probably cannot and will not do the regular check-ups and maintenance that needs to be done.
I don’t think that railroads have ever examined the trucks of individual freight cars. There’s too many of them. They have always watched for hotboxes, both visually and with defect detectors.
But today’s trains have become incredibly long through the use of distributed power units, DPUs. They are too long for effective visual checks, and to make that problem worse railroads have been cutting the size of their crews, making them do more with less.
This is a result of not bothering to get any input from their work crews and allowing suits without any operational knowledge to make bad decisions. And it will end badly, with railroads being found liable for disasters like Palestine Ohio.