Government Oversight of Bus, Truck Industries Faulted

Federal accident investigators called Thursday for a probe of the government agency charged with ensuring the safety of commercial vehicles, saying their own look into four tour bus and truck crashes that killed 25 people raised “serious questions” about how well the agency is doing its job.

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration inspectors failed to respond to red flags indicating significant safety problems on the part of bus and truck companies involved in accidents in California, Oregon, Kentucky and Tennessee, documents released by the National Transportation Safety Board said. Besides those killed, 83 people were injured in the crashes, many seriously.

In one crash, federal inspectors gave a California tour bus company safety clearance a month before one of its buses overturned near San Bernardino last February while returning from a ski resort. Seven passengers and a pickup truck driver were killed, 11 passengers were seriously injured and 22 others had minor to moderate injuries. The bus driver told passengers the brakes had failed.

Federal inspectors didn’t ask to examine Scapadas Magicas’s buses during their visit to the company’s headquarters near San Diego even though its buses had been cited for a host of mechanical problems during spot roadside inspections.

California Highway Patrol crash investigators found a catastrophic failure of the brakes that a proper inspection by federal officials could have foreseen. All six brakes on the crashed bus were defective, according to the NTSB’s report. Drums were worn or cracked, linings were worn down or otherwise “defective or inoperative.”

Two of the company’s other buses had serious mechanical defects, and the company had failed to have its buses regularly inspected by the state.

In another accident, a driver lost control on a slippery highway near Pendleton, Ore., in December 2012, sending his bus through a barrier and down a steep slope. Nine people were killed, and the driver and 37 passengers were injured.

The driver of the bus had been on duty for 92 hours in the eight-day stretch before the accident, exceeding the 70-hour federal limit.

The bus was traveling too fast in poor weather, and the driver had the vehicle’s transmission retarder engaged even though it isn’t supposed to be used when roads are slick because it can cause wheels to skid, the NTSB said. A transmission retarder limits speed.

The motor carrier administration said in a statement that the number of unsafe companies and drivers the agency has taken off the road have more than tripled in the past three years.

“We have also brought together key safety, industry and enforcement organizations to ask for their help and support our efforts,” the statement said. “We are continuously looking for new ways to make our investigation methods even more effective so we shut down unsafe companies before a crash occurs and will thoroughly review the NTSB’s findings.”

This article appeared in print on page 3 of the November 8th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.