The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is planning to launch a wide-ranging investigation of the discount tour-bus industry and the regulatory agencies tasked with monitoring passenger safety for these buses.

NTSB Motor Coach Safety

The NTSB agreed to the investigation in response to a demand for the same from Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY).

The duo had previously sent the NTSB a letter on March 14, 2011 asking for this investigation after a tour-bus accident on March 12 resulted in 15 deaths when a bus operated by World Wide Tours returning to New York from Connecticut flipped over on I-95 and rammed into a sign-post.

“A broad-based investigation into the discount tour-bus industry will send a wake-up call that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” said Schumer. “March’s bus crash was a tragedy for New York, but these passengers did not have to die in vain. A full and comprehensive review of this industry and the safety regulations governing it will no doubt lead to greater safety standards for the thousands of passengers who use these buses every week.”

In a hearing last week, NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman told members of a Senate transportation subcommittee that technologies recommended by the NTSB could have prevented many of these bus crashes and can save more lives even if an accident does take place.

But the regulators in charge of governing the motor-coach industry and sub-sectors like discount tour buses have failed to get the NTSB’s safety recommendations implemented. Hersman cited crash avoidance technologies like adaptive cruise control and electronic-stability control that help prevent accidents in cars but are not mandatory for buses.

According to a recent NTSB presentation, forward collision warning like adaptive cruise control/active braking would reduce rear-end collisions and prevent 4,700 crashes per year, resulting in a drop in fatalities (96 per year) and injuries (2,500 per year).

Implementation of stability-control systems on all passenger vehicles would save between 5,300 to 9,600 lives per year and prevent 156,000 to 238,000 injuries per year.

The NTSB also cites enhanced protection for passengers in its latest Most Wanted List and suggests seat belts, stronger roofs and glazed windows to prevent passengers being ejected when a bus rolls over. The driver’s capability and fatigue is another major cause for concern, and the NTSB wants electronic on-board data recorders to log each driver’s hours of service.

Most of these recommendations seem reasonable, especially since the NTSB has facts and figures to prove how many lives these changes can save. So why haven’t the motor coach industry and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) which governs these issues done anything about it?

That would mostly be because the American Bus Association (ABA) says the cost of implementing these changes could be as high as $89,000 per vehicle.

Considering the size of the motor-coach industry (762 million passenger trips, one million jobs, $40 billion in wages and $112 billion in annual economic impact) and the initial $500,000 outlay for a new bus, it would be fair to say that the industry isn’t thrilled at being forced to spend another $89,000 upgrading each bus.

The NTSB says its review will take six months, and its report is likely to result in new legislation from Congress that will force tour-bus operators to implement some of these safety measures and technologies.

Photo: NTSB

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