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34–790 PDF 2007

MOTORCOACH SAFETY

(110–19)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 20, 2007

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

(II)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT AND PIPELINES 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BOB FILNER, California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS Page

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vi

TESTIMONY 

Crean, Chris, Director of Safety and Security, Peter Pan Bus Lines .................. 27

Gillan, Jacqueline S., Vice President, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety 32

Hamilton, Bruce, President/Business Agent, Amalgamated Transit Union National Local 1700 .................................................................................................. 30

Hill, John H., Administrator, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration .... 3

Rosenker, Mark V., Chairman, National Transportation Safety Board .............. 5

Scott, Brian, President, Escot Bus Lines ............................................................... 28

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania .................................................................... 42

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 43

Rahall, Hon. Nick J., of West Virginia .................................................................. 46

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Crean, Christopher M. ............................................................................................. 47

Gillan, Jacqueline S. ................................................................................................ 53

Hamilton, Bruce ....................................................................................................... 77

Hill, John .................................................................................................................. 88

Rosenker, Mark V. ................................................................................................... 98

Scott, Brian L. .......................................................................................................... 107

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Hill, John H., Administrator, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 

Responses to questions from the Subcommittee ................................................ 94

ADDITION TO THE RECORD 

Red Chamber Company, Rick Martin, Executive Director, letter to Rep. 

Napolitano ............................................................................................................ 113

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34790.006
(1)

HEARING ON MOTORCOACH SAFETY 

Tuesday, March 20, 2007, 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m. in room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Peter DeFazio 

[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. The Subcommittee will come to order. Today, we 

are going to consider issues relating to motorcoach safety. 

I appreciate the witnesses being here. One of the witnesses, the 

Chairman of the NTSB, has a fairly short time line. We know that 

Mr. Hill is very generous with his time, as he was last week, but 

we will try and not keep either of you too long, and meet your 

schedules. We do appreciate your being here. 

Late last year, the Committee held a hearing on the issue of 

curbside service, and a number of issues relating to safety of the 

traveling public came up. Some of that, I believe, I know is addressed in some of the testimony here today. I still consider that 

to be an evolving issue that merits more attention by this Committee. We will be discussing that. 

Motorcoach travel is quite safe when compared to other modes, 

but even one avoidable death is too many. I believe that there are 

improvements in the system that can be made that could avoid unnecessary death. We are going to have some testimony here about 

Wilmer, Texas, and that horrible, horrible tragedy there; and also 

some testimony regarding the Atlanta, Georgia crash earlier this 

month. 

The NTSB has a number of recommendations relating to motor 

carrier and motorcoach safety that have not been accepted by or 

fully addressed by the administrative agency, and we will want to 

discuss the reasons for that and whether or not some of their proposals should be implemented in the near future. 

We also will have some discussion of the FMCSA’s oversight, 

which relates back to a couple of these tragedies, and is an ongoing 

issue, also relating back to the curbside service which I mentioned 

earlier. 

So there is a lot of material to cover. I look forward to your testimony. 

With that, I would recognize the Ranking Member for his opening remarks. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding 

the hearing today. Motorcoach safety is an issue which is often 

2

overlooked until there is a serious accident and lives are lost, like 

the very tragic, very sad bus accident two weeks ago in Atlanta 

and other accidents. 

It is an amazing statistic that unfortunately more people are 

killed in three and a half or four months on the Nation’s highways 

than have been killed in all U.S. aviation accidents combined since 

the Wright Brothers’ flight in 1903. But that points up the really 

serious challenge that we face in this area of highway safety. 

Today, we will hear from witnesses who believe the Government’s regulatory oversight of buses is adequate, and they safely 

transport people on our roads. Other witnesses believe the regulations are not stringent enough and the Federal Government does 

not provide sufficient enforcement of these safety regulations. They 

would like more regulations imposed on the bus industry possibly 

even requiring seat belt use on buses. 

In my opinion, safety should be the top priority for motorcoach 

operators. It certainly is the top priority for this Subcommittee. 

Intercity and charter buses transport up to 57 people in a single 

bus. Moving that many people is a huge responsibility and should 

be taken very seriously. But 93 percent of the motorcoach industry 

is comprised of small companies. These are Mom and Pop businesses and they only operate a few buses. They have extremely 

high operating costs to run the businesses. 

When I was in law practice, I represented a bus company that 

operated three buses. All three of their drivers had driven well over 

one million miles each without any accident. In fact, I think they 

were really close to five million or ten million miles without any 

accidents. 

I am concerned about imposing unnecessary burdens which may 

not have a safety impact on these small businesses. These small 

businesses are the backbone of the entire motorcoach industry. I 

believe we need to find a balance here for ensuring the safety of 

motorcoaches, while not overwhelming these companies. 

Small business supports the U.S. economy. It is imperative to 

keep these companies in mind when we consider additional safety 

regulations. It is irresponsible to create more regulations simply for 

the appearance of safety. The big guys, the big companies can handle the costs of additional regulations, but small businesses sometimes can be put out of business just by a small increase in operating costs. 

I am confident that the motorcoach industry can remain safe 

without additional regulations if the Government does its job properly. 

Again, let me reiterate that the safety of people traveling on 

buses and the safety of the drivers sharing the road with these 

buses should be our top priority. But we need to make sure that 

any additional regulations that are adopted actually really do improve safety, as opposed to only imposing additional burdens on 

these small businesses. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, again for holding this hearing. It is 

a very important topic, and I look forward to hearing the testimony 

from our two panels. 

3

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay, with that, we will move forward to our witnesses in the order in which they are listed. So that would be, first, 

Administrator Hill. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN H. HILL, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL 

MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY ADMINISTRATION 

Mr. HILL. Thank you, Chairman DeFazio, Ranking Member Duncan, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me 

to discuss the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s safety 

oversight role in motorcoach operations. 

Mr. Chairman, FMCSA was conceived out of the need to achieve 

stronger commercial motor vehicle safety. It is our mandate. More 

than that, the agency consists of dedicated professionals to whom 

highway safety is the highest priority. 

Motorcoaches are one of the safest forms of commercial passenger transportation, as you indicated, Mr. Chairman. When such 

vehicles are involved in crashes, however, the potential for catastrophic loss of life and injury is significant. We saw that as indicated in your comments today in the tragic crash on March 2. 

However, compliant or not, it is our agency’s responsibility to implement programs to implement the safety of motorcoach transportation. To that end, FMCSA has established a National Motorcoach 

Safety Program that emphasizes six areas: one, increasing the 

number of motorcoach compliance reviews; secondly, ensuring motorcoach companies have a higher priority within our compliance 

review prioritization system known as SafeStat; third, establishing 

formal motorcoach inspections within all States; four, improving 

the collection and analysis of safety data; five, reducing motorcoach 

fires; and six, expediting safety audits of new entrant passenger 

carriers. 

Addressing each of these areas is essential to improving passenger vehicle safety. FMCSA is focusing on motorcoach safety and 

the compliance review numbers bear this out. In fiscal years 2005 

and 2006, FMCSA and the State police and law enforcement agencies exceeded our compliance review goals established in our performance budget by over 30 percent. 

Augmenting these efforts, FMCSA has established a national initiative to address unrated and high priority motorcoach operations. 

This project is expanding our agency’s contact with motorcoach operators who have old safety ratings, no established safety rating, 

or appear to run unsafely. We expect to complete a compliance review and assess the safety rating for every unrated motorcoach carrier. We anticipate this to be about 1,600 by the end of the year. 

We believe that bus companies deserve careful program attention 

and dedicated enforcement resources. Therefore, we will apply 

more stringent safety standards for passenger carriers through a 

reform of our risk pointer system known as SafeStat. 

FMCSA has also been stressing motorcoach safety as part of the 

Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program. Since 2004, our State 

and local law enforcement have initiated a series of motorcoach inspection and compliance review strike force activities to increase 

compliance with passenger safety. 

The most recent inspection strike force was conducted during November, 2006, and included 14 States from Maine to Virginia. 

4

Thanks to the 22 State and local police agencies that joined our 

staff in the activity, in just two weeks we did more than 1,300 safety inspections that were conducted on passenger vehicles and drivers. 

As a result of strike force’s like this, FMCSA and our State partners conducted more than 26,000 bus inspections in fiscal year 

2006, which is a 103 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. 

The use of safety data is critical to target our resources. In the 

past three years, there has been significant improvement in the 

timeliness and quality of safety data. This is due in part to the increased numbers of compliance reviews and inspections, as I have 

described. 

FMCSA is also conducting a Bus Crash Causation Study to determine the reasons for and the factors contributing to serious bus 

crashes. The data collection for this study will be completed this 

May and the final report is due in December of 2007. 

Another critical aspect of our safety program relates to the problem of motorcoach fires. It is vital that we gather and evaluate information on the causes, frequency, and severity of bus and motorcoach fires and analyze the bus fire data to measure the effectiveness of bus fire prevention. 

To improve the collection and analysis of bus fire data, the 

FMCSA recently issued a statement to FMCSA field offices and our 

MCSAP partners reemphasizing that fires occurring in commercial 

vehicles, including buses, are crashes and must be reported to 

FMCSA. We are also working with the National Highway Traffic 

Safety Administration to capture bus fire information they receive 

through their monitoring systems. 

Each year, approximately 900 new motor carriers enter the passenger arena. FMCSA has implemented a new entrant program 

placing greater priority on safety of passenger carriers. New entrant passenger carriers are now subject to an on site safety audit 

within nine months of beginning operations. 

Since the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999, when 

FMCSA was created as an independent agency, the motor carrier 

population has increased steadily, with expected doubling of freight 

volumes by 2020. While independent assessments have concluded 

that our compliance and enforcement programs are effective, 

FMCSA’s compliance review program is resource-intensive and 

reaches only a small percentage of motor carriers. 

So to improve our outreach into motor carriers, FMCSA has developed an improved safety oversight process called the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, or CSA 2010. The goal is to develop and implement more effective and efficient ways for FMCSA 

and its State partners to reduce commercial motor vehicle crashes, 

fatalities and injuries. 

In concluding, whether it be a college student boarding a Greyhound bus for a summer cross-country trip, a senior citizens group 

traveling by charter bus to see the Grand Canyon, or a class trip 

to Washington, D.C., it is our duty to ensure our passenger carriers 

provide safe transportation. 

Mr. Chairman, FMCSA is firmly committed to increasing safety 

for our Nation’s traveling public. I know that thousands of State 

5

and local law enforcement officers in your Districts are also dedicated to improving highway safety. 

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to outline the work 

FMCSA is doing. I commend you, Mr. Chairman, for demonstrating 

strong safety oversight of the transportation of our Country’s bus 

passengers, and I am happy to answer your questions. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Administrator Hill. 

Chairman Rosenker, you are recognized. You may give your prepared remarks. You may respond to statements made by the Administrator, and we can certainly get into things in questions. 

Thank you. Go ahead. 

TESTIMONY OF MARK V. ROSENKER, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL 

TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD 

Mr. ROSENKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have submitted a 

formal statement for the record, with your permission, sir. 

Good morning, Chairman DeFazio, Ranking Member Duncan and 

members of the Subcommittee. 

Mr. Chairman, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you 

and the distinguished members of the Subcommittee and the staff 

for inviting the Safety Board to testify today on the topic of motorcoach safety, and for your continued interest in furthering the safety of our Nation’s highways. 

As you know, the Safety Board is charged with investigating 

major transportation accidents, including highway accidents, determining their probable cause, and making recommendations to prevent similar accidents from happening again. Changes in highway 

or vehicle design, driver training, occupant protection, and regulatory oversight are frequently recommended. 

Today, I would like to discuss specifically motorcoach safety. As 

you know, intercity motorcoach travel, as you said, is one of the 

safest modes of transportation, with fewer than 17 fatalities in an 

average year. It is also one of the most popular forms of travel, 

transporting more passengers than either commercial air or rail 

travel. 

However, in 2005, 33 persons riding in motorcoaches received 

fatal injuries. This is the highest number of onboard fatalities in 

at least 15 years. Unfortunately, one of the accidents I will discuss 

today, although extremely unique, made the largest contribution to 

the number. 

The issues that I would like to highlight include motorcoach 

crashworthiness, motorcoach fires, and motorcoach maintenance 

and oversight by the FMCSA. 

The Safety Board has long been concerned about the safety of 

those who ride motorcoaches. Quite frankly, people have a right to 

expect the highest level of safety when they pay for a ticket and 

place their safety in the hands of a motorcoach operator. One of the 

reasons motorcoach operations are so safe is because they usually 

provide a reasonable level of occupant protection when accidents 

occur. Unfortunately, the occupant protection provided in 

motorcoaches does not work well in all accident scenarios. 

For example, we recently launched to the scene of a motorcoach 

accident in Atlanta that involved a baseball team from Boston University in Ohio. Although this accident occurred only 18 days ago, 

6

we know from past experience that one of the major issues is likely 

to be the crashworthiness of the motorcoach. In this accident, seven 

people died. But perhaps more importantly, some of the occupants 

were ejected or partially ejected from the vehicle. 

As you know, the motorcoaches use a form of passive occupant 

protection called ‘‘compartmentalization,’’ which protects passengers much the same way an egg crate protects eggs. However, 

the Board has found that compartmentalization does not work in 

all crash scenarios. 

Therefore, as a result of two exhaustive studies the Board did in 

1999, we made six recommendations to NHTSA to improve motorcoach crashworthiness in four primary areas: first, develop standards for motorcoach occupant protection systems that protect passengers in frontal, side, and rear impacts, as well as rollovers; second, revise window glazing requirements to prevent occupant ejection through windows; third, require the emergency window emergency window exits to be opened easily and that they remain open 

during an emergency evacuation; and fourth, make motorcoach 

roofs stronger. 

The next motorcoach safety issue I would like to discuss is that 

of motorcoach fires. On September 23, 2005, near Dallas, Texas, a 

fire engulfed a motorcoach carrying elderly evacuees away from the 

predicted path of Hurricane Rita. Twenty three of the 44 passengers were unable to escape the blaze and perished. This motorcoach fire shows the potential for catastrophe when passengers are 

unable to exit a burning motorcoach quickly. 

As a result of its investigation, the Board made the following recommendations to NHTSA: require enhanced fire protection of fuel 

systems and use fire-hardened materials to limit the spread of fires 

that do occur; develop detection systems that provide an early 

warning to drivers of a potential fire so that passengers might have 

time to escape; and finally to establish acceptable egress times for 

motorcoaches. 

Finally, I would like to talk about the oversight of the motorcoach industry by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. 

The Safety Board determined that the cause of the fatal bus fire 

near Dallas was insufficient lubrication in the wheel-bearing assembly of the motorcoach, which eventually led to the ignition of 

the tire and the catastrophic fire. This occurred because the motorcoach operator, Global Limo Incorporated, failed to detect this lack 

of lubrication and FMCSA failed to provide effective oversight of 

the motor carrier through its compliance review process. 

As a result, the Board reiterated its longstanding recommendation to FMCSA to elevate the importance of driver and vehicle violations in evaluating the safety fitness of motor carriers and take 

more unfit carriers off the road. 

Mr. Chairman, I know you share my desire to improve motorcoach safety, and I hope this information will assist you in accomplishing that goal. 

This completes my oral statement and I would be happy to respond to any questions. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

We will proceed now with the first round of questions. 

7

Administrator Hill, you have heard Chairman Rosenker, particularly about the Wilmer crash. It wasn’t a crash, but a fatal accident 

with the bus catching fire. How is it that, and the words are extraordinary, not just the Chairman, but other members of the 

NTSB used regarding the persistent, long-term violations by Global 

Limo. The word ‘‘appalling,’’ among others, was used. Yet somehow, 

this company had been given a satisfactory rating by FMCSA. 

Have you looked at that? Do you understand how they could have 

been given a satisfactory rating, despite their persistent, long-term 

deficiencies in maintenance? 

Since you did find deficiencies, but allowed them to continue to 

operate, why wasn’t there a follow up? 

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, the tragedy that we are talking about 

here was awful. I wish that I could tell you a different story, but 

the satisfactory safety rating is something that happens in a snapshot in time. At the time that we went in and looked at it, they 

had the safety protocols in place, but there was obviously a denigration of that safety focus after we were in there. 

I agree with you that the safety rating, and with the NTSB, that 

the safety rating process needs to be addressed. We have undertaken steps to do that, and we are working through the comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 to do so. We are planning on pilot testing 

this next year. We are starting rulemaking processes this year on 

developing this, to change the safety fitness process. I am committing to this Committee and to the Board that we are going to follow 

through on this initiative. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Chairman Rosenker, would you respond to that? I 

thought that NTSB found that this was not something that had 

just recently occurred, but it was more persistent and endemic. 

How could it have escaped the notice of the FMCSA? Didn’t the 

FMCSA find some deficiencies at the time of the original evaluation? 

Mr. ROSENKER. They did, Mr. Chairman. They found seven. But 

the way that the system works, it doesn’t necessarily look at the 

kinds of things that the NTSB believes should be focused upon. 

That is, the condition of the vehicle itself and also the driver, the 

capability of the driver, the training of the driver, the status of the 

driver, the medical condition of the driver. 

Those are the things that we have found in our history of examining motorcoach accidents that have been the primary problems 

and the cause of terrible tragic accidents. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Do their 2010 changes give you some level of confidence that they will better address those? They seem to me pretty 

simple and focused, as opposed to bureaucratic evaluations. Is the 

bus safe? Is the driver safe? Pretty simple stuff, right? Does their 

new iteration of their safety inspection program get more at those 

root issues? 

Mr. ROSENKER. This appears to be a comprehensive examination 

of their processes and how they are going to improve it. I am 

hopful. I am an optimist, but I can’t tell you what is going to happen in three years, and who may administer that program when 

it finally does come to pass. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Administrator Hill, you have heard the condition 

of the vehicle itself and the driver. Do you feel that you are going 

8

to better address what seemed to be, what most Americans would 

think, are the two most important and fairly simple to evaluate 

issues for their traveling safety? It is amazing to me that the old 

system, or the existing system, has been so deficient in these areas. 

How is that going to be addressed with the new system? 

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, I would say to you that there have 

been some independent evaluations of the compliance review process, and it has been found to be successful at addressing high-risk 

carriers. One of the challenges that we have as an agency is dealing with the volume of vehicles that are involved. When we go out 

and do a compliance review, our staff does, or the State enforcement person goes out, they are looking at a variety of the processes 

that we think roll into safety fitness evaluation, everything from 

drug and alcohol testing, the driver’s piece to that, the medical 

piece; whether or not they are complying with hours of service. 

That process, depending on the size of the carrier, can take a considerable amount of time, or if it is a small carrier with one truck, 

it is a one or two day process. 

So when you start adding in to doing an inspection at every compliance review, that adds significantly to the amount of time that 

it takes the investigator at the place of business. So what we have 

been trying to focus on is use the compliance review to look at basic 

safety management controls, and then the roadside inspections on 

which I testified to this Committee last week. We did over three 

million of those in the Nation last year. Those roadside inspections 

feed into a data system that allows us then to evaluate the safety 

and fitness of the vehicles. 

Now, what we think will happen under CSA 2010 that you are 

asking about is we believe that there will be the opportunity then 

to rate carriers based upon what is happening at the roadside, as 

opposed to just what is happening when we go in and do a snapshot in time review of that company’s operations. So we believe 

that it will help, but this is going to be a very big process. It is 

going to be a big sea change for the way we do business and the 

way the States do business. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So you are saying in the case of Global Limo that 

the FMCSA representative who visited basically just reviewed paperwork and never actually went out and looked at the buses, and 

that is the way the agency works. 

Mr. HILL. I am saying that there are times that we inspect the 

vehicles, but it is not——

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, the random checks on the road, you said how 

many last year? 

Mr. HILL. Three million. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Out of how many operations, what percent of operations? 

Mr. HILL. That is going to be——

Mr. DEFAZIO. Given how many trucks and buses there are. It has 

to be a pretty small percent. 

Mr. HILL. It is. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. Okay. So instead of when certifying, I mean, 

actually sending someone out to one of these carriers, you just don’t 

have the staff or the resources to actually physically inspect the veVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:31 Aug 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34790 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
9

hicles. Because you are saying it would take too much time. Basically, we are getting to a staffing issue, I believe here. 

Mr. HILL. Well, that could be one factor. The other is the size of 

the carrier population and what is expected to be done. So what we 

are trying to do is look at all of the data that we have available. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. But I mean if you actually get physically to 

an operator, you would think, well, we don’t get there very often. 

In fact, again, I appreciate the fact that there may be a statutory 

deficiency here, that new operators can operate up to 18 months 

before they are inspected, a loophole being utilized by curbside 

folks. And you are trying to get to them within nine months. Don’t 

you think it should be before they begin operations? Why would we 

say, you are a startup; we know nothing about you; you have submitted your paperwork; we are going to actually come out and see 

if you are actually at that address, which in the case of the 

curbside people, they often are not; and maybe even go out and 

kick a couple of tires. Don’t you think that would be a good thing 

to do before someone starts operating? 

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, if the Committee feels statutorily that 

we need to take a look at that, I would be glad to work with the 

Committee and do so. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Do you think that would be prudent, as a citizen 

who might consume this product? Would you want to get on a bus 

of a new operator that had not been inspected? 

Mr. HILL. I would like to have the authority to do more things 

with safety than what we currently have in this area, but we do 

have laws that are in place that require us to allow as many people 

in the industry to join as we can. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, we need to look at that, and then you can 

say it is free market forces. If that operator kills people, then they 

probably won’t get passengers next week. I don’t know. I think the 

American public deserves better than that, so I am a less concerned about free entry and ease of entry into a business which involves the safety of the traveling public than I am about these new 

entrants providing and meeting minimum safety standards. So I 

have a concern about that, and we will have staff visit with you 

about that. 

And then secondly, the issue of when audits are actually conducted, that it is just a paperwork audit. I just think that going 

out and looking at the condition of some of the equipment is pretty 

key. It seems to me that should also be included. Whether that requires some directive or requires more staff, I am not sure how we 

get there, but I would like to examine that issue, too. 

Mr. HILL. That particular piece, Mr. Chairman, we can take care 

of administratively. We can definitely look at doing that a little bit 

more effectively in our new entrant process. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Thank you. 

The Ranking Member? 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, these are pretty impressive statistics. You have 3,300 

bus companies, 2.4 billion miles traveled by these companies, 595 

million trips, and as Chairman Rosenker said, it is probably the 

safest form of transportation. We shouldn’t lose sight of that. 

10

On the other hand, everybody, no matter what their position, 

they should always be trying to improve and get better. We do 

want to try to make things as safe as possible. 

On the other hand, there is an appropriate balance in every area. 

If you over-regulate a business, then you are going to raise the 

prices and you could potentially knock a lot of poor and lower income people out of a form of transportation that is very, very important to them. So you have to take those into consideration also. 

How frequently, Administrator Hill, on average are these buses 

inspected? 

Mr. HILL. Congressman Duncan, we are inspecting about 26,000 

last year at the roadside. Now, I need to caveat that. In SAFETEALU, there was a prohibition against us doing inspections while the 

vehicle is en route, so we do it at point of origin or point of destination. We try to work that. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Right. And there is a reason for that, because you 

didn’t want to inconvenience all the passengers. 

Mr. HILL. Well, we were concerned about roadside safety. We 

don’t want a busload of people sitting alongside the road, and we 

want to make sure that it is safe. 

But 26,000 of those inspections done last year, now, that still is 

a small number, but it is, as I indicated, double from what we did 

the previous year. So we are trying to take this Committee’s guidance to improve motorcoach safety as a result of the curbside hearing, and improve our oversight. So we are really making sure that 

the States are much more involved in inspections of buses. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I doubt that there are very many, there are probably not any agencies in the Federal Government that can say they 

have doubled their number of inspections from the previous year. 

That is quite an increase. 

I do hope that because of this hearing that there is not pressure 

to suddenly start finding more violations. What I am more impressed with is that if people do find problems, they put on their 

reports how quickly they were corrected. That is an important 

thing. 

Chairman Rosenker, in your testimony you name four areas: motorcoach crashworthiness, motorcoach fires, maintenance and oversight by FMCSA, and cell phone use by bus drivers. Which would 

you say is the number one, or would think is the most important? 

Mr. ROSENKER. I hate to begin the process of selecting a priority, 

when all four of those together really is the answer to begin the 

process of preventing accidents altogether, and if in fact an accident does occur, it is a survivable accident. So it is really the combination of those areas together that will make this safe industry 

even safer. 

Mr. DUNCAN. And you discussed the need for improved roof 

strength, and easier to open emergency window exists. How difficult or how expensive do you think it would be to correct or improve those areas? 

Mr. ROSENKER. Well, as far as the pricing is concerned, we have 

not done a study on pricing. We just know what the results will 

be if in fact these are implemented. When we are talking about 

issues that would provide for additional standards, they would be 

11

NHTSA’s responsibility of oversight and what in fact those standards would be. 

We are looking for a result. The result that we are looking for 

is a stronger roof. We are looking for stronger glass. These buses 

have very large picture windows. If in fact they break in a rollover, 

the potential for ejection is very high. 

We are also looking for improved motorcoach occupant protection 

systems. These would be an entirely new examination of how we 

want to restrain people in seats. Currently, we compartmentalize. 

That is a good system in a forward accident or in a rear end accident. It is not a good system in a rollover. 

So we don’t have the answer specifically. That is what NHTSA 

is supposed to do. In a study that they have just released last 

week, they examined the issue of rollovers and how they would better improve restraints. It may well be a combination of passive and 

active systems. Some form may well be a belt. It may well be a bag. 

It may well be an improved compartment. 

We are not prescriptive in our recommendations. We are looking 

for a result. 

And finally on the issue of egress, we want to make sure that in 

the event the bus is on its side, you are able to get out through 

its roof. 

Mr. DUNCAN. What did you feel was the most important lesson 

learned out of the Texas bus incident? 

Mr. ROSENKER. Clearly in this case, preventive maintenance. 

There was no preventive maintenance in this case. It was, if something broke we would fix it. There was no plan to make sure that 

the buses were safe when they went out on the road. In this case, 

there was no grease, no oil in the bearings. Therefore, they got hot. 

They caught fire. And in this particular case, and a very, very 

unique one, Mr. Duncan, there were 44 elderly people, many of 

which were non-ambulatory. They had no chance of getting out in 

a big fire. No chance whatsoever. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Administrator Hill, in those 26,000 inspections that 

you did last year, you said you doubled the number of inspections. 

Did the number of violations also double? Or was there some relation there? Were things getting better or worse from what your 

agency found out in those inspections? 

Mr. HILL. Congressman Duncan, what we have found is that the 

motorcoach out of service rate is much lower, both for vehicle and 

driver, than it is for trucks. What we have found is that that has 

been a constant theme as we have done inspections through the 

years. 

Now, what we have done in the last year since the curbside bus 

hearing is we have addressed some specific areas with those operators in the Northeast with the Task Force. We have identified 24 

curbside operators in the Northeast area, that we could identify, 

anyway. Of that, we have taken up some enforcement actions. We 

have done safety or compliance reviews on all of those but one, and 

that one is pending. In that case, we have found two that have 

gone out of business after we visited them, and three have conditional ratings. We have taken enforcement cases for I think 15 

times, including hours of service, drug and alcohol, and also one 

12

company had speeding problems. So we specifically did enforcement 

cases against those curbside operators that were having difficulty. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I remember that hearing, and you did have some 

operators in that area that the whole industry, I think, was upset 

about. 

At any rate, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. Altmire, do you have questions? Okay, no questions. 

Mrs. Capito? 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank the gentlemen for testifying. 

I am very interested in this subject, particularly on the heels of 

the Atlanta tragic accident. I happen to have a daughter who travels with an athletic team, and they drive a lot of times in the middle of the night, rushing to get back for class after completing their 

athletic endeavors. 

I would like to ask two questions. One is the relationship between the NHTSA, the NTSB, and the FMCSA, if I have them all. 

I think a lot of times people working in the right direction, trying 

to improve and make suggestions for safety, for driver safety, for 

vehicle safety, but sometimes there is a lack of coordination between the three entities that are working and other such entities, 

whether it is the States or other localities. 

What kind of measures have you all put forward, or do you think 

would be good to put forward, to see that the right hand is talking 

to the left hand, and all going in the same direction? 

Mr. HILL. Congresswoman, thank you for that question. One of 

the things that happens when the NTSB issues a recommendation, 

we are required at the Department level every month to go through 

an evaluation process of how we are doing on meeting rulemaking 

deadlines and also NTSB recommendations. 

So we are required to report to our Deputy Secretary every 

month on the progress we are making with those specific recommendations. Also it requires us to coordinate with the sister 

agency, so that we have to show if this is a recommendation, as the 

Chairman has indicated today, that involves NHTSA, FMCSA involving motorcoach safety, we have to report on how we are coordinating and communicating with NHTSA and milestones that we 

are supposed to meet in making that recommendation. So we have 

internal processes. 

And I can just tell you as an agency, we work very closely with 

the NTSB staff and also the NHTSA staff to try to, in this case, 

deal with bus fires. One of the charges that came out of the Wilmer 

bus fire investigation was the need to improve bus fire data. So we 

have been working with NHTSA to better identify sources of information about bus fires. We are also working with the fire group to 

deal with information they have in that arena. We are right now 

analyzing 550 bus fires that have occurred over the last 10 years 

to better get our hands around what is going on with these tragic 

instances so that we can then develop policy and regulatory agendas for how we should proceed accordingly. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Did you have another comment? 

Mr. ROSENKER. Yes, ma’am. Our business is to investigate accidents, to determine the probable cause, and from that probable 

13

cause, develop a series of recommendations that will prevent that 

type of accident from happening again. We present them to our fellow agencies. Now, we are an independent agency, so we will operate by talking to the modal administrators of their agencies. We 

will talk to the departments. We will also talk to Congress. We will 

also talk to operators. We will also talk to manufacturers. 

Our record is pretty good. Of the 12,600 recommendations we 

have issued in the 40 years that we have been around—and we will 

celebrate, if I can offer a little commercial, our 40th anniversary 

beginning in April—82 percent of what we have recommended has 

become either an operating change, a manufacturing change, a regulatory change, or a legislative change. 

So we are proud of our record. I would like to see that become 

100 percent and the Board will be working toward that. 

Mrs. CAPITO. A quick question. Has there ever been any research 

into airbags in motorcoaches, side bags? 

Mr. ROSENKER. There has been a good deal of research, but I 

don’t know where the final assessment and analysis is. We are 

really interested in examining what this report, which was just released by NHTSA and Transport Canada, says about occupant protection in motor coaches. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Okay, last question, most of the motor operators 

are small businesses. According to the data, only 1 percent of the 

companies in the industry operate more than 100 motorcoaches. Do 

you have available some special training for small businesses? I 

think we have identified this as part of the problem with the inability of some small businesses that are getting in this maybe 

without going through all the hoops, and then 18 months later then 

becoming inspected. 

I think this is shining a light on a deficiency, at least in terms 

of small business training and safety awareness. 

Mr. HILL. Congresswoman, one of the things that happened with 

the Congress back earlier than when I was with the agency was 

they set up the new entrant program as a statutory requirement. 

It said basically we want you to go out and we want you to help 

motor carriers understand what their responsibilities are under the 

law, and then make sure that you audit to see whether or not that 

happens after they first come into business. 

We believe, as the Chairman has indicated, that the whole motorcoach industry is so sensitive with the commodities they haul. 

We didn’t feel comfortable waiting for 18 months. That is why we 

administratively have moved that up to nine months to get in there 

and visit them. 

Secondly, we are taking an approach that we do have information on our web site for new entrant motor carries, motorcoach operators. Secondly, we are visiting them. There are 900 of them in 

a given year that come into business, so we go out and make sure 

that they are visited. And then we provide tools to them, either 

through written materials or web site materials, and then we take 

them through the process to make sure that they have the systems 

in place—drug and alcohol, hours of service, and so forth. 

So we are doing that. I think what we need to do is as we are 

seeing the new entrant process change, we have issued a notice of 

proposed rulemaking to change the way we look at new entrants, 

14

to make it more stringent. We believe that as that goes into effect, 

we are going to see much more oversight of those new entrants, as 

the Chairman had indicated, on an earlier visit than we are now. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentlelady for the good questions. 

Ms. Fallin, go ahead. Mr. Oberstar is thinking, as he often does, 

so he will have questions soon. 

Ms. FALLIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I heard you talk, Director Hill, that you have doubled the 

amount of inspections on the buses. I think it is very important for 

us in Government to have a culture of continuous improvement in 

all processes that we deliver. 

I also heard you say that it would be helpful if you had authority 

to do more things for safety than the laws allow. I don’t know what 

you meant by that, but if you could explain what we can do in Congress to help you, that the laws might allow you to do for safety. 

Mr. HILL. Specifically, it was the interchange between the Chairman and I concerning the new entrants. He said we may have a 

statutory issue. Right now, the law says that we have to get in and 

do a new entrant audit within 18 months. So we can’t withhold the 

ability to issue operating authority to anyone until we have had the 

new entrant review. 

So I am not suggesting that we require every single person to 

show fitness beforehand. That would be something that we would 

have to work with the Committee on. But I do think that the motorcoach issue does require up front evaluation much more stringently than we do with people who haul general freight. 

Ms. FALLIN. Okay. If I could do a follow-up question, Mr. Chairman. You were asked about the airbags and if there have been any 

studies for safety on airbags. What about seat belts? I know it is 

a cost factor, but what have the studies shown a far as cost factors 

versus safety? 

Mr. ROSENKER. We have actually done some work early on in 

seat belts in motorcoaches. The jury is out. In some cases, you may 

have some unintended consequences of accidents which could be in 

fact just a minor injury, creating a serious injury with lap belts. 

So we have done some kinematic simulation and we are still not 

sure what the answer is. 

We are looking at a systems approach, fully integrated. I don’t 

want to give the impression that safety belts are bad. We have 

done very, very well with safety belts in automobiles. They have 

been extremely useful and extremely effective in preventing injury 

and fatalities. The question is how do you do that in a much larger 

compartment to guarantee that you have, in all kinds of situations, 

a safe restraining system, and that you won’t do harm in what otherwise may well be a minor accident. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you for your questions. 

I would like to follow up on that. Was the qualifying word in 

there ‘‘lap’’ belt? What are you anticipating that could cause more 

injury if a bus were to go on its side or go on its top, and people 

are flung out. Let’s go to the Georgia case, very recent, very tragic, 

especially when young people die so prematurely. I think those 

were mostly ejection deaths in that case. Weren’t they? 

15

Mr. ROSENKER. I am hesitant to tell you exactly what happened 

there, given the fact that we are only 18 days into that investigation. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. But we know where the bodies were or weren’t 

found. 

Mr. ROSENKER. In some cases, we know exactly what happened, 

and in others we are still trying to analyze what happened. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. 

Mr. ROSENKER. If it is okay with you, Mr. Chairman, I would 

prefer to talk about the recommendations we have had after studying a number of motorcoach accidents that have been on the record 

for close to eight years. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay, that would be fine. 

Mr. ROSENKER. And nothing has been done. They are in the 

areas, if you will, of NHTSA studying and ultimately coming up 

with a series of standards which talk about motorcoach occupant 

protection systems. The word is ‘‘systems,’’ a fully integrated system, some of which will be active, some of which may be passive. 

We are hesitant at the NTSB to say the answer is clearly using 

a safety belt in some way, shape or form. It may not be the best 

answer. It may well be in a bus where you have 50 some odd people to be doing something maybe with a bag, something with an 

active or a passive system that occurs when in fact a strike occurs 

or the roll occurs. We have some data that we have seen through 

our kinematic simulations that has not always proven that a belt 

is the answer. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Again, just if we could get at the bottom of this, 

is it because it was a lap belt, not shoulder harness lap belt? Or 

was it just restraining the person in the seat that caused the problem? 

Mr. ROSENKER. It could be, and I hate to be——

Mr. DEFAZIO. You have raised the issue about its potential. I 

know the EU and Australia have gone ahead with safety belt or 

shoulder harness safety belt systems. I am just trying to get at the 

root of is it at the margin? What is the concern about restraining 

a person in the seat? 

Mr. ROSENKER. If in fact we talk in terms of new vehicles, it is 

much easier to create the system. We certainly do not want to 

begin the process of retrofitting vehicles that are not designed to 

be equipped with either lap belts or a combination of a lap shoulder 

belt. We don’t believe that is the answer. They are not currently 

designed to be able to handle that type of stress or that type of design. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. If they were anchored to the seat? 

Mr. ROSENKER. If they were anchored in any way, shape or form 

to even perhaps the floor panels, because the floor panel was not 

currently designed to hold them. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So we are where aviation was 10 years ago, where 

they did require lap belts, but the lap belts were developed to DC3 standards, and we were flying jets. Therefore, the seats didn’t 

stay anchored and the industry was very reluctant to have seats 

that would stay anchored, until finally a new standard was mandated and we actually began to have seats that were developed for 

jets and used in jets. 

16

So you are saying basically what you would need is to say from 

this day forward, or promulgate a future rule for newly manufactured buses that either the seats as they are anchored to the floor 

people could be safely restrained in the seat, or they could be directly attached to the floor, which would be sufficient. But preexisting buses don’t meet those standards and couldn’t. 

Mr. ROSENKER. Yes, sir. But in addition to that, there may well 

be even better systems out there, new technologies that may well 

include smaller bags. If you take a look at what some of the automobiles are doing now, they actually have side bags. That may well 

be an approach that could be looked at for the motorcoach. 

As I say, we are not prescriptive at the NTSB. We are looking 

for what we believe is a fully integrated systems approach which 

will result in preventing people from being ejected or thrown in 

some way across the aisle. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Thank you. That was a digression. 

Chairman Oberstar? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much. I am delighted you have 

scheduled this hearing and are probing into this subject matter in 

depth. I want to thank you and Mr. Duncan for your thoughtful 

and carefully structured approach. 

Intercity bus travels have been a matter of long interest, and 

more than appreciation, an economic issue in my District. Greyhound started between my home town and the neighboring community of Hibbing, Minnesota. They started bringing miners to work. 

Bus Andy, George Anderson founded Greyhound. Well, his neighbor asked him for a lift to work one snowy morning when he figured he couldn’t walk and make it in time. After a few days, Bus 

Andy took a torch and cut his Hupmobile in half, welded a couple 

of rails in there, put some seats in, and started hauling miners to 

work for charge. 

About the same time, General Motors came out with the first 

bus. He started it. By then he had named it Greyhound Services. 

My father was a great bus devotee. He said, if you can’t walk there 

or take a bus there, you don’t need to go there, wherever ‘‘there’’ 

was. 

In 2005, while aviation was posting some 700 million passengers 

in the domestic air space, intercity buses carried 631 million passengers. That should cause us to stop, take stock, and think about 

the significance of this hearing and its subject matter. 

Let me put it in further context. When we created the Federal 

Motor Carrier Safety Administration, I took language from the 

opening paragraph of the organic act of the FAA in 1958, and started the legislation with these words: ‘‘Safety in motor carriers shall 

be maintained at the highest possible level.’’ That is the basic 

guidepost for FAA safety, and it has served us exceedingly well. I 

thought we ought to, if we are creating a new administration to 

manage safety for over the road vehicles, trucks and buses and 

vans and all the rest, that we ought to aim for the best, not just 

the safety that, as in aviation, the airlines can afford; not just the 

safety the bus companies or trucking companies can afford; but the 

highest possible level. 

17

The National Transportation Safety Board has been our beacon 

for guidance on safety matters, finding what went wrong, giving 

guidelines to how to fix it in the future. 

Mr. Hill, you come from a safety background, the Indiana Patrol. 

You understand the significance. You and I had a good conversation about several aspects of safety. Not all of the issues that are 

the subject of this hearing can be laid at your doorstep, but they 

are instructive for you. 

Mr. DeFazio just raised a question about seats. As Mr. Rosenker 

knows, and Mr. DeFazio and Mr. Duncan as well from his work in 

aviation, many years ago when I chaired the Aviation Subcommittee, we pressed the FAA to improve the standards and 

strength of seats, because what happens so often in a crash is the 

seats shear off, people slide to the front, and are crushed and 

killed. 

So FAA has imposed a 16G standard. Is there any such standard 

for motorcoaches? Mr. Hill? Mr. Rosenker? 

Mr. HILL. I am not familiar with such a standard. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Have you given any thought to such a thing? 

Have you looked at past accidents and seen what happens to seats 

when they have a crash? 

Mr. HILL. I would be glad to confer with my colleagues at 

NHTSA, and I would be glad to get back with the Committee on 

that. I am not familiar with any studies in that regard, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes, I think you need some intermodalism here, 

and I think it would be very important to bring NHTSA into this 

discussion. 

Chairman Rosenker? 

Mr. ROSENKER. In the United States, we have no standard specifically for the passenger seat. However, overseas in Australia I 

believe they have a fairly significant G force. Yet in Europe it is 

I believe a 3G factor. 

As far as the safety belt is concerned in a bus, there is only one 

requirement, and that is for the driver. That is today. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes. That is something that should be considered. 

I find when I take Amtrak, I sit down and I reach for my belt, and 

it is not there. Maybe you don’t need it, but it should be a thoughtful consideration. That 33 passengers were killed in 2005 is too 

many. We should have a zero tolerance. That is what aviation’s 

goal is, a zero accident objective. 

What is even of further significance is that this hearing is being 

held and the consideration of safety practices in FMCSA at the 

very time that the border is being opened to Mexican trucks. The 

mindset of FMCSA in matters such as over the road buses will be 

important as an indicator of how you intend to proceed to enforce 

Mexican trucks. 

Now, in the case of Global Limo, the FMCSA found egregious 

critical violations, and then shut the company down. But that is a 

rare occurrence, and that was in a unique circumstance. The out 

of service rate for commercial vehicles, both trucks and buses, is 23 

percent last year. Now, if that is the case, and we have Mexican 

trucks and we are supposed to have inspectors in Mexico and in 

the United States, and they are going to have inspectors. 

18

What are you thinking about as you proceed with enforcement of 

the existing intercity bus service and as you look forward to the 

penetration of Mexican trucks further into the United States? If we 

already have such a bad out of service record, can you then further 

delineate between trucks and buses of that 23 percent? 

Mr. HILL. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Before you came in the room, 

Ranking Member Duncan asked me something about the performance of buses and the out of service rate. The out of service rate 

for buses is fairly consistent for the vehicle part. It is about 9 percent. The 23 percent that you quoted, sir, is related specifically to 

the truck out of service rate. 

As far as the driver out of service rate, it is somewhere around 

4 percent for the drivers of motorcoaches. So 9 percent versus 23 

percent, I think you are right. We should not be satisfied with 9 

percent. We should be looking for the 0 percent to 1 percent. There 

should not be out of service violations for motorcoaches or trucks. 

We need to have more improvement in that area. 

So I am consistent with you. I am going to CVSA, which is the 

Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, next week to speak with all of 

our State partners. This is one of the things that I am going to be 

talking about, is the oversight from this Committee, the commitment to safety, and the fact that we need to continue to improve 

our activities in motorcoach oversight and not just rest on the improvements that have been made in the last 20 years. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The sooner that the companies understand that 

the FMCSA is going to be serious and tough and shut some companies down, they will shape up, because they don’t want to be out 

of service. They don’t want to be out of business. They have to be 

in business and in compliance. 

Now, in response to an earlier question about the company that 

was inspected just a short time before its accident, you said that 

was largely a paperwork review. Explain what you mean by paperwork review. 

Mr. HILL. The question was from Chairman DeFazio about, one, 

when we did the compliance review of Global Limo, why did we not 

find the vehicle-related defects. What I explained to him is that our 

compliance review under normal circumstances does not involve an 

in-depth inspection process of all the vehicles. 

What we rely on primarily as far as vehicle inspections is from 

the roadside inspections and handle them randomly throughout the 

Country. So there was not an in-depth vehicle assessment at the 

time that that compliance review was made. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Do you have a sufficient number of inspectors to 

undertake these reviews? How many inspectors do you have? 

Mr. HILL. We have 700 safety investigators throughout the Country. We have between 10,000 and 13,000 State trained inspectors 

and auditors and investigators among the various State jurisdictions. And when the Congress set up the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program, they were very intentional about wanting there 

to be grant programs given to the States. They wanted this to be 

a partnership. Having come from the State, I am very much interested in making sure our agency keeps that focus in pushing the 

work out. 

19

For example, I came to the agency in 2003 and I was shocked 

that more States weren’t doing compliance reviews, somewhere 

around 1,000 to 1,500 a year. I said, look, we have to get more 

State people involved in doing compliance reviews of carriers. They 

have more people than we do. They have the expertise, and are 

closer to the situation. They know this. 

So we have now increased that last year up to over 5,000 compliance reviews by the State people. That is not satisfactory for me. 

So to answer your question, I want to see more resources dedicated 

to commercial motor vehicle safety, and that is one of the communications I am going to have with the States next week. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is very good and commendable. I will close 

on a note that you go meet with those folks next week, and you 

tell them this Committee is serious about safety. We are serious 

about the partnership between the Federal and the State government. I participated in that, in crafting the language, although I 

thought we ought to have a stronger Federal role, but there is a 

partnership between the Federal Government and the State government in the construction of our highways and bridges and transit systems. There similarly should be a partnership on safety. 

I will just give you one example. In the mid-1980s, I was Chair 

of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee. We were looking into aviation safety. We found major failures of maintenance in 

U.S. air carriers. The FAA Flight Standards District Offices reported to the Subcommittee that we don’t have enough people to 

do these inspections; we are looking at paperwork, not engine work; 

we are looking at reports, we are not hands-on on the shop floor. 

As a result of that, Congress and this Committee approved an 

authorization of an increase of $10 million to hire at least 1,000 

more FAA safety inspectors, and train them, and put them out in 

the FSDOs, the Flight Standards District Offices. 

So you can’t do safety if you are just looking at the paperwork 

and looking at the reports. You have to be in the shops, in the offices, with the drivers. You have to be out on the roads. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Boozman? 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I really don’t have any questions, but I have appreciated the discussion, and I appreciate you and Mr. Duncan holding the hearing. 

This is not the most glamorous subject in the world, but it is very, 

very important. So again, I appreciate it. Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

Just to follow up on the Chairman’s line of questioning, Administrator Hill. What is a compliance review versus what do we call the 

initial review when a new company is established? What do we call 

that? 

Mr. HILL. A safety audit. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. So does a safety audit include a thorough inspection of all the equipment, since a compliance review does not? 

Mr. HILL. No, Mr. Chairman, it does not. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So in a safety audit, we are still not going out and 

physically looking at the buses there? 

20

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, the operative word there was ‘‘thorough.’’ You said, do we do a thorough inspection. We do some inspections at the business, but it is not as robust as you are indicating that you would like it to be. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. But a safety audit for a new entrant does 

include at least going out and taking a look at the equipment. 

Mr. HILL. In some cases, it does, but it is not the normal. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. That causes me an even new and higher level of 

concern. So we have someone who has entered into business. They 

are a new entrant. And I appreciate the fact that you are getting 

to them within nine months, and not 18 months, to look at mostly 

paperwork, but I just can’t believe that at some point do all States 

require physical inspection of buses for new entrants? Do all States 

require that? 

Mr. HILL. Not all States, no, sir. There are some that do. For example, in Indiana and I think in Ohio they have that kind of regime. The bus that was in question here in the Atlanta crash had 

been inspected by the Public Utility Commission authorities the 

Friday before that crash. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. But the one in Texas, for instance, Texas 

doesn’t inspect buses. 

Mr. HILL. Well, I don’t know the answer, but I would be glad to 

get back with you. But several States do not require it. That is correct. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So we have the possibility that we have a new entrant, and they can operate for nine months under your current inspection regime, under your regulations up to 18 months, without 

any review of their operations, except for random safety checks on 

the highway. And then even when we do get someone there, we are 

not mandating at least an initial inspection of their equipment. 

That is correct, right? That is correct? 

Mr. HILL. That is an accurate description. Yes, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Yes, okay. If I could just return again to the Texas 

incident, I am again curious, and there is some discrepancy between when the compliance review was conducted versus when the 

deaths occurred. I have one source that says three months, and another that says 19 months. Do we know the answer to that? 

Mr. HILL. I would feel better about getting back with you on the 

record, but I know that there was a compliance review that was 

done initially by our agency, and there was a review done by the 

Texas authorities. And then after the tragic event that occurred, 

we went back in and did a compliance review again. I would like 

to get back to you, if we could. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. If we could nail down the chronology, the deficiencies found, when was the initial compliance review, what deficiencies were found, what further action was taken. Because I am 

puzzled. The driver did not speak, understand or read English; did 

not have a U.S. commercial driver’s license; did not get a U.S. doctor to issue him a medical fitness certificate; and had never received training on the bus he was operating. I don’t know where 

they got him. He maybe just snuck across the border and they put 

him in the driver’s seat and he was a good price for the company. 

But I am just curious as to how long he had been there, and they 

only had six drivers. We are not talking about a big company. If 

21

you are coming in and reviewing the paperwork, and the company 

has six drivers, how could we miss the fact that the guy is an illegal immigrant who has no training, no license, and no medical review? I mean, how could that happen? That has to have been a 

contributory factor here. 

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, all I can say to you is that when we 

did the review, it is possible that more drivers could have been 

hired after we did the review, but that is something that I will 

have to delineate in the current review. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. We would also like that chronology if we could, too. 

Mr. HILL. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Was this person on staff at the time of the review, 

and somehow did we miss those extraordinary deficiencies. 

Chairman Rosenker, am I pronouncing your name properly? 

Mr. ROSENKER. Yes, sir. Very well. Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. All right. I just wanted to make sure. People always butcher mine, so I am sensitive to that. 

I want to ask you to quantify back. It is a point you have made, 

but I just want to get at the bottom. There have been 65 recommendations, according to our records, since 1999 to the Federal 

Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and only 26 have been closed, 

which when you talked about your overall recommendations and 

statistics, historically you had an 80 some odd percent closure rate. 

In this case, by my rough estimate, we are pretty far below 50 percent here. We are in the low 40s. 

Could you tell us which of those you think, again for the record, 

are the most important that have not yet been acted upon? I assume none of these are frivolous. I don’t think NTSB proposes frivolous things, but some of them might be potentially expensive. Is 

that the problem? Could you just enumerate a little bit, or elaborate? 

Mr. ROSENKER. Sir, 36 remain open of the 65. The actual percentage rate from 1967 until today, the 40 years of the NTSB, is 

about 72 percent. So we would like to see the Administrator bring 

that up by about 10 percent. At least he would be average, and 

frankly we would like to see him even go beyond that. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. We don’t think of him as an average guy. We 

would like him to beat the average. 

Mr. ROSENKER. I would agree, sir. I would agree. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. All right. 

Mr. ROSENKER. The areas that we are particularly interested in 

are that of dealing with the driver; that of medical issues. We have 

put out eight recommendations, seven of which are still open. Now, 

they have a Medical Review Board that is getting ready to work 

on a host of the medical issues that I believe we have suggested. 

Part of the problem, Mr. DeFazio, is it takes too long from the 

time we make a recommendation to the time the FMCSA and 

frankly NHTSA and in some cases other modal agencies, to implement what we have said. These are well thought-out recommendations. These are documented by virtual analysis of accidents. And 

because of that, when you implement them, we genuinely believe 

you can begin the process of prevention, and if in fact you have an 

accident, mitigating the tragic results. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

22

Mr. Hill, do you care to respond? 

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, the medical issues that are involved in 

the most wanted list and also in the open recommendations are 

something that we have been working on very hard at FMCSA. Let 

me just point out a couple of things that we are doing. 

My predecessor when she came in and I was her Chief Safety Officer, we really worked hard at getting the rulemaking backlog improved. Medical processes are part of that. We have set up the 

Medical Review Board. We are dealing with preparing right now 

regulatory action to deal with the National Registry, so we would 

have an examiner registry to make sure that the people that are 

doing exams are meeting standards, and then we can track it and 

make sure that they are complying with what the guidance from 

this Committee has been. 

And then the Medical Review Board has met three times. They 

are meeting again in April. They are going to be giving us recommendations on how we should then proceed with changing our 

regulations. Most of these medical regulations have been in place 

for a number of years. I know this Committee has given us specific 

guidance in SAFETEA-LU about diabetes exemptions and so forth. 

So we are trying to make sure that our medical standards reflect 

current science. So we are working to do that. We have a great 

panel of people that are putting that together. We have issued a 

notice of proposed rulemaking for combining the medical certification with the commercial driver’s license. That comment period 

has closed. We are now going through the comment analysis phase, 

and we are going to prepare, then, the final rules so that we can 

get it out. 

We want to get this done. We want to get this most wanted list 

taken care of. I am anxious to work with the NTSB on doing it. 

One of the things I would like to say to the Chairman and this 

Committee for the record is that we are getting a lot of guidance 

from people that think that we ought to just model some other 

medical program that is in place, specifically the FAA, which is a 

much different set of people. We are dealing with six million drivers. It is going to complicate the costs. It is going to complicate the 

oversight. 

So what we are trying to do is to make sure that we come up 

with a rule that meets the guidance that Congress has said, within 

the constraints of cost/benefit that we must deal with as an agency. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. Dent? 

Mr. DENT. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Good morning. Mr. Hill, I have a question for you with respect 

to safety matters. In the safety scoring database that FMCSA 

maintains, SafeStat, some bus companies appear to have no record 

of inspections by Federal inspectors. How does a bus company not 

have any inspections, yet still retain its operating authority? 

Mr. HILL. Congressman Dent, one of the things that I talked 

about earlier in this hearing was the need to prioritize the bus 

compliance review process differently than what we have been 

doing. When we first got the initial set of recommendations from 

the hearing in Wilmer, Texas, in which the bus fire we have been 

discussing came out, I think one of the Members made a very asVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:31 Aug 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34790 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
23

tute observation that there are some of these motorcoach companies that have never had a compliance review, and some of them 

have been in business for a number of years. 

I came back to staff, and I said this is unacceptable. We have got 

to get every one of these passenger carriers rated, even if it means 

diverting resources. So what we are going to do between now and 

the end of the year is we are visiting every unrated, that means 

a carrier that has never had a compliance review with us, we are 

going to visit every one of those carriers to make sure that they 

have a safety rating in place, so we can track their performance 

better. 

So that is something that we are doing. And then we have increased the number of inspections from what we did last year significantly. We are going to continue to address that by requiring 

the States to have a bus inspection program in place. Some States 

have not been doing bus inspections, so we are requiring that as 

a part of receiving grant funding. 

So to answer your question, we want to make sure that there are 

better inspections, better compliance reviews so that we can better 

track these motor carriers. 

Mr. DENT. That leads to my next question, which is there have 

been reports of bus companies failing their safety inspections, and 

FMCSA is revoking the company’s operating authority. And then 

within a short period of time, a few days, the bus company resumes 

operations. So how is it possible and what additional steps need to 

be taken to ensure that an operator that is shut down for non-compliance doesn’t simply restart operations under a different company 

or corporate name? 

Mr. HILL. This is a huge issue for us because you are right. That 

has been the practice, not just with bus companies, but with truck 

companies that want to skirt the safety violations. So we are working. One of the requirements of SAFETEA-LU is that we are supposed to have a rule in place that will allow us to better track 

these carriers when they go out of business. So we are in the process of trying to define what kind of identifiers can we label a corporate entity with, and track the movement of those people, and at 

what level, to make sure that we know that when a carrier does 

stop operation because of our safety practices, we can track where 

they are going. 

At this point, what we are doing is we are dealing with anecdotal 

information that we receive from our investigators. We also rely on 

the SafeStat prioritization scheme. When we see a carrier coming 

up as unsafe, we go back and verify whether or not that carrier has 

been having similar problems. 

So we are trying to use some of our existing resources, but we 

are also looking to the future to write a rule to address this. 

Mr. DENT. Okay. Thank you for that answer. 

At this time, I will yield back the balance of my time. Thanks, 

Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for his questions. 

Mr. Coble? 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Chairman, I apologize for my belated arrival. I 

had a Judiciary hearing earlier. 

24

Mr. Hill, let me ask you this. There have been reports of bus 

companies that fail safety inspections, and the FMCSA then in response revokes the company’s operating authority. And then within 

a few days, the bus resumes operations, I am told. How is this possible? And what additional steps need to be taken to ensure that 

an operator that is shut down for non-compliance doesn’t simply restart operations under a different corporate name? 

Mr. HILL. Congressman Coble, as I was mentioning earlier in the 

hearing——

Mr. COBLE. This may have already been addressed. Has it been? 

Mr. HILL. I would be glad to answer the question. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I think the gentleman’s question is a little different. I think he is asking if you actually do get to the point of 

enforcement and basically having them suspend operations, I believe the gentleman is saying even though they received that order, 

they begin operating again. Not that they have been approved to 

operate again, but they continue or begin to operate. Is that the 

gentleman’s question? 

Mr. COBLE. Yes. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I don’t think that has been addressed. 

Mr. COBLE. Okay. 

Mr. HILL. I know that, Congressman Coble, this was a problem 

especially in the Northeast with some of the curbside operators 

after last year’s hearing. This was an issue that was brought up. 

So what we have done is in the last year we have directed a series 

of strike force activities to address these curbside operators. We 

have identified 24 of them to date. 

We have also been dealing with enforcement action against them. 

So we are trying to first of all identify who they are, so that we 

know who the principal owners are, and then we have gone in and 

visited them. And then secondly, when we find complaints or violations of another curbside operator, we go to make sure that this is 

not a recreated entity, by looking at the names and the information 

we have from the earlier compliance review. 

The one thing that we have not had in place is we have not had 

compliance reviews of all these carriers done. So we have now identified these 28 companies, and I said earlier that 18 of them have 

been visited with ratings; three are conditional; two have gone out 

of business; and one is pending a review. 

So we are trying to build our database so that we know exactly 

what is going on. As I indicated in the earlier questions, we are 

now in the process of developing a rule that will allow us to take 

enforcement action against people that recreate themselves. 

Mr. COBLE. It appears you are on top of this. I am encouraged 

to hear that. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for his question. 

If we can go back just to this issue. My understanding is that an 

operator has to fail in two or more areas to get an unsatisfactory. 

Is that correct? So even if they are abysmal over here in the driver 

ratings, if over in the other categories they are okay, you would not 

give them an unsatisfactory? Is there a level at which, within one 

category, they have problems that you would give them an unsatisfactory rating? Or is there some regulation that precludes that? 

25

Mr. HILL. No, it is an internal process, and that is one of the reasons why we are looking at the comprehensive safety analysis, 

2010, to redo the way we do safety ratings, sir. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So currently that is the case? 

Mr. HILL. Yes, that is correct. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So someone can have a whole bunch of drivers over 

here that are just like the Wilmer driver who is an illegal alien and 

no drug testing, no competence, no license, no medical, no nothing, 

but we wouldn’t flunk that company if we found out they had 

someone like that? Under current rules, we couldn’t? 

Mr. HILL. We could take enforcement action, but we would not 

revoke their operating license or give them an unsatisfactory rating. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Boy, that does not give me much confidence. I 

think Mr. Rosenker would say these are two critical things. Could 

you tell us what those two critical things are? 

Mr. ROSENKER. Mr. Chairman, you are on target as far as the 

NTSB is concerned. We believe that there needs to be some weight 

to these issues, the weight to the issues on driver performance, 

driver medical categories, driver knowledge, a whole host of issues 

which are directly attributed to the driver’s capability to drive that 

vehicle safely. 

In addition, we believe there needs to be high weight put on the 

safety of the vehicle itself. If the vehicle is the Wreck of the 

Hesperus, then we believe the FMCSA ought to be able to say this 

vehicle is not safe to be put on the road and it will not be in our 

enforcement procedure. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Hill? 

Mr. HILL. May I follow up, sir? 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Sure. Okay. 

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, I would just say to you, we don’t just 

give them a rating that is satisfactory or conditional, and then 

allow them to go into oblivion. We do have a system called the Inspector Selection System, ISS, which essentially provides roadside 

inspectors with a score of whether or not these vehicles and drivers 

and their safety practices are meeting standards. So if they are 

having deficiencies, as you have outlined, in this area of driver deficiencies, that is going to show up in this inspector score, and they 

are going to be required to be inspected as they go through a weigh 

station or they get stopped along the roadside. So we do have some 

oversight. 

However, the safety rating piece that you specifically asked 

about, that is accurate. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I guess the question would be, and again this goes 

back, which you can’t answer specifically, about their rating, how 

they receive that rating, and whether or not those items were identified, and the ISS was stopping the Global Limo vehicles. Because 

as I understand it, they were switching off license plates. They had 

illegal drivers. They were not doing maintenance. And somehow, 

they didn’t ring any alarm bells until they killed 44 people. 

Mr. HILL. The Chairman is well noted on that, and I am going 

to have to concede that there were some deficiencies in this whole 

mess. 

26

Mr. DEFAZIO. I think we really need to kind of compare. This 

could be a really instructive case of comparing, since we did actually have a compliance review, and comparing what was identified; 

what that triggered; what follow up; and what actually happened; 

and the findings of NTSB and others that we will have soon, as I 

understand it, about what deficiencies existed after the fact. 

So this may be really an instructive model to where the system 

doesn’t really track in a linear way. I am just appalled. There 

ought to be certain level of violation in one category where you just 

say, look, you have this guy driving who doesn’t have a CDL, 

doesn’t have a medical, doesn’t speak the language, doesn’t know 

how to drive the vehicle. We are taking license plates back with us, 

and you get in touch when you straighten this stuff out, and we 

will send an inspector by again. 

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, one of the things that I would just say 

to you is that in the case of the tragedy that occurred in Llano, 

there is another story that can be told here. The bus company had 

been visited. They did have the safety practices in place. We had 

done inspections just within days before. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. No, that goes to the second issue, which is containing people in the vehicle and the integrity of the vehicle. I understand. I am not saying that your system always fails. There are 

a very few bad apples out there, obviously, or we would have a lot 

more problems. But we have to get the bad apples out of the barrel 

a little more expeditiously. That is a very simple way of putting it, 

but I think that is what the public would expect. I don’t know, I 

do. 

Do either of you have any further reflections or closing statements? Otherwise, we will move on. 

Mr. HILL. Could I just say one thing in regard to this? 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Sure. 

Mr. HILL. I think it goes to the heart of what you are saying, Mr. 

Chairman. There was a program that was put in place several 

years ago, what we now call PRISM. Basically, what this does is 

it comes out actually the 1991 ISTEA. It allowed for the linkage 

of the safety performance with the registration system, which in 

the past were not conjoined. So we have right now I think 27 

States that have the legislative authority to revoke registration 

plates of motor carriers that are found to be not in compliance with 

safety regs. I think that is a good thing. 

If we could have more States participating in that, we are working that very hard. But I think that is an area where we can get 

to the heart of this because as States have the authority to revoke 

registration, then you don’t just have somebody violating a service 

order, you have somebody violating registration laws. And when 

they don’t have the plates, that is a lot easier to detect than just 

an out of service order. So just a point of order, sir. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, I would be very interested in working with 

the Department on that, and would be happy if you provided some 

details to correspond with those States and State legislatures and 

suggest that that would be a prudent step for them to take. So if 

you could provide some follow-up information, a list, I would be 

happy to follow up on that. 

Mr. HILL. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

27

Mr. DEFAZIO. Yes? 

Mr. ROSENKER. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity 

to be before the Committee today. I enjoyed the opportunity to be 

next to my friend, Administrator Hill. He has a tough job. I believe 

he and his colleagues at the FMCSA are as dedicated to safety as 

we are at the NTSB, and as the folks over at NHTSA are. 

All I would ask is that the Administrator take a look very carefully at our recommendations, and work with his staff to expeditiously implement them, and get that number from 72 percent to 

perhaps 84 percent or 85 percent, because as the Chairman said, 

you are well above average, Mr. Administrator. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank you both. This is a very big job, given the 

volume of the vehicles. I just know that we have to do better. So 

thanks to you both for being here today and helping contribute to 

ideas for improvement. I appreciate your time. 

With that, I would dismiss this panel and call the next panel to 

come forward. 

I thank the second panel for being here. We will begin with Mr. 

Crean. 

TESTIMONY OF CHRIS CREAN, DIRECTOR OF SAFETY AND 

SECURITY, PETER PAN BUS LINES 

Mr. CREAN. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, my name 

is Christopher Crean, and I am the Director of Safety and Security 

for Peter Pan Bus Lines. 

First and foremost, I would like to thank you for the opportunity 

to appear today and discuss the issue of bus safety. For the past 

17 years, I have had the pleasure to work for Peter Pan Bus Lines, 

which is located in Springfield, Massachusetts. Peter Pan was 

founded in 1933 and has for 74 years made safety a priority in its 

operations. Because or that commitment, I have been an active 

member of the American Bus Association, Bus Industry Safety 

Council, and an associate member of the Commercial Vehicles Safety Alliance, and a board member for the local chapter of the National Safety Council. 

I know we are here today to discuss bus safety. It is quite simple. 

If we want to improve bus safety, then let’s simply begin enforcing 

the regulations and funding the enforcement effort. New entrant 

audits must be conducted within a time frame that FMCSA has 

laid out. New entrants must be held accountable for failure to implement and comply with the regulations. 

The safety audit process does very little, in my opinion, to take 

potentially unsafe carriers off the road. If a carrier should fail a 

safety inspection or an audit, the license of that carrier should be 

suspended or revoked until that carrier comes into full compliance. 

Secondly is the issue of curbside carriers, which I am sure you 

have heard a lot about. These carriers offer low cost service at the 

expense of public safety. These carriers operate daily in defiance of 

Federal and State law. FMCSA has initiated some enforcement action against these carriers, but it is has been very much an uphill 

battle. When these carriers are subject to enforcement action, they 

simply change their name, their registration, their address and 

DOT number, and continue operation with a different paying 

scheme and a different name. 

28

FMCSA must immediately become aggressive in the auditing and 

enforcement of all curbside carriers. As a matter of fact, I would 

say that FMCSA should treat curbside carriers in the same manner 

they would treat me if my company was not in compliance with 

FMCSA guidelines. 

Lastly, please let me mention the issue of SafeStat, a tool designed for both the consumer and the enforcement community to 

identify unsafe carriers. SafeStat does a great job identifying unsafe carriers. Unfortunately, it ends there. Carriers identified by 

SafeStat as unsafe are allowed day to day to continue their operation without even a hint of possible enforcement action. 

I ask, what is the point of identifying an unsafe carrier if nothing 

is going to happen to that carrier? These carriers know nothing will 

be done and that is why accidents will happen and public safety 

will continue to be jeopardized. As a carrier who each and every 

day puts his best foot forward, as one who makes sure that his carrier is so safe that even his family and friends will ride on it, I say 

enough—enough with the carriers who violate the law; enough with 

the carriers who jeopardize the lives of thousands of innocent individuals whose only fault is sharing the highway with them. I say 

enough. These carriers must comply with the law. We must close 

the gap, and we must end the free ride for these carriers. 

Gentlemen, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, 

thank you for the opportunity to speak. I am open to any questions. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Mr. Scott? 

TESTIMONY OF BRIAN SCOTT, PRESIDENT, ESCOT BUS LINES 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman DeFazio, Mr. Duncan, members of the Committee, I 

appreciate your calling this hearing today and the opportunity to 

represent the bus and motorcoach industry in my testimony. This 

Committee has a long and distinguished record of promoting safety 

on the roadways and lies at the center of our Nation’s public discourse on the best practices to achieve safe and efficient travel. 

On behalf of the United Motorcoach Association, it is my goal to 

provide the Committee our perspective on the factors that have 

contributed to our industry’s venerable safety record and our goal 

of improving that record. 

We are all here with heavy hearts today, Mr. Chairman, as this 

hearing comes on the heels of the tragic accident in Atlanta that 

killed seven and injured many more. On behalf of the UMA, our 

thoughts and prayers are with the families of those affected. 

My name is Brian Scott. I am President of Escot Bus Lines of 

Largo, Florida. I also currently serve as the Chairman of the 

United Motorcoach Association, the leading national association for 

bus and motorcoach operators. Our company was founded in 1983 

by my parents, Louis and Diane Scott. We are proud to say that 

Escot Bus Lines remains a local family owned and operated company serving the Tampa Bay and Central Florida communities for 

nearly a quarter century. 

Our family’s commitment to safety is responsible for our growth 

from a two-bus company in 1983, to a medium size business by our 

29

industry standards. We enjoy the highest safety ratings available 

from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the United States 

Department of Defense. 

Today, my sister Pam and I run the business, while my parents 

remain involved as advisers on our board of directors. We operate 

45 buses and motorcoaches, conduct over 500,000 charter passenger trips, and 1.7 million employee shuttle passenger trips annually. 

Much like Escot Bus Lines, the bus and motorcoach industry represents a true small business success story, where most companies 

are family owned and multi-generational. There are nearly 3,600 

bus and motorcoach companies in our Nation, operating nearly 

40,000 motorcoaches, providing 631 million passenger trips annually. The average company employs 46 individuals. Each bus and 

motorcoach represents an industry average of 4.23 employees, and 

75 percent of the industry consists of fleets of fewer than 100 units. 

Indeed, nearly one half of the industry consists of fleets 24 units 

or fewer. 

To meet customer expectations of safety and comfort, the bus and 

motorcoach industry has been quick to adopt safety advancements 

such as anti-lock brake systems, engine brakes, and high back 

seats that have become standard due to the industry’s rapid adoption. These safety advancements continue to be adopted, while the 

purchase price of a motorcoach has increased rapidly. Where a motorcoach cost approximately $175,000 20 years ago, today’s modern 

motorcoach routinely tops $425,000. 

Today, technologies such as global positioning systems monitor 

drivers’ behavior in ways unimaginable a decade ago. Cameras 

monitor and record driver and passenger activity, as well as the 

immediate environment. Electronic tire monitoring systems reduce 

the likelihood of tire failures and fires, while fire suppression systems are increasingly being utilized. 

Our industry prides itself on an excellent safety record, but despite averaging fewer than 10 fatalities each year, one fatality is 

one fatality too many. Safety isn’t just a management function with 

our business. It is our business. 

If our customers lose confidence in our ability to transport them, 

we lose our business. There is a direct correlation between safety 

and success. The United Motorcoach Association offers the public 

a detailed, online consumer guide to purchasing motorcoach services, and a student’s guide in an effort to aid the Nation’s consumers in selecting a safe, reliable bus and motorcoach operator. 

The UMA, along with offering routine safety-related assistance 

in seminars at our annual conventions, hosts an annual safety 

management seminar held at the NTSB’s academy in Ashburn, 

Virginia, which has exceeded its capacity every year. 

Earlier this year, UMA’s board of directors announced the launch 

of the Bus and Motorcoach Academy, which is accredited by the 

College of Southern Maryland. This training academy will serve as 

a source of basic operational knowledge for owners and management, along with courses that one has the knowledge and skills of 

our industry’s most valuable assets, which are our drivers. 

UMA also works with the Bus Industry Safety Council and the 

Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance in continuing efforts to develop 

30

and propagate safe operating practices. For new operators coming 

into the fold, UMA also has a new operator’s guide, which goes over 

all the details that an operator needs to know in order to be a safe 

and profitable operation. 

In conclusion, the over the road intercity bus industry remains 

a vital component of our Nation’s economy, with services affording 

access to jobs, education and health care. Our industry is a critical 

component to our Nation’s travel and tourism industry. The bus 

and motorcoach industry is represented by the United Motorcoach 

Association and stands ready to assist Congress and the National 

Highway Transportation Safety Administration in the further development and implementation of safe practices and equipment, 

grounded in sound science and testing, that improves the safety for 

our Nation’s 690 million annual over the road intercity bus passengers. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Duncan and Members of the 

Committee your indulgence. Again, I am honored to testify before 

this Committee and would welcome any questions. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Mr. Hamilton? 

TESTIMONY OF BRUCE HAMILTON, PRESIDENT/BUSINESS 

AGENT, AMALGAMATED TRANSIT UNION NATIONAL LOCAL 

1700

Mr. HAMILTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the 

Committee. My name is Bruce Hamilton. I am the President of 

Amalgamated Transit Union National Local 1700, representing 

Greyhound employees nationwide. 

On behalf of our members and all ATU members who operate 

intercity bus service, including those at Peter Pan Lines, I am very 

grateful for your interest in intercity bus safety, and for the opportunity to testify. 

Today, I will briefly touch on safety issues of concern to the ATU, 

including the need for increased enforcement of existing Federal 

standards, vehicle safety standards, and the issues of driver fatigue, and of public security. 

The first issue is, and has been, one of primary concern to the 

ATU. That is the emergence of numerous low cost carriers that 

skirt Federal safety regulations and other things. Since Mr. Crean 

of Peter Pan has done such a good job of going into that issue, I 

will just say one thing, which is that there is simply no excuse for 

continuing to allow these unsafe companies on the road. We must 

be more aggressive with the enforcement of safety and other regulations, and the penalties must be significant enough to deter violations. 

On a related issue, steps must be taken to ensure that these and 

other bus companies employ drivers that meet the English language requirements of Federal regulations and other Federal motor 

carrier safety regulations that a commercial motor vehicle driver 

must be able to read and speak English sufficiently to converse 

with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and 

signals, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records. 

31

Despite this, some States actually allow applicants for a commercial driver’s license to take the CDL test in a foreign language. 

Driver fatigue is another issue that has often been cited as a contributing cause of bus accidents. Despite this, the DOT in the recent past has proposed increasing the number of hours that an 

intercity bus operator is allowed to drive. The ATU urges this Congress to oppose any proposals to increase the hours of service for 

bus drivers. In fact, we would support certain further restrictions 

on those hours in order to reduce driver fatigue and to reduce accidents. 

I strongly believe that the best way to reduce drive fatigue is to 

increase driver wages and benefits. Decline in wages in the industry has put pressure on drivers to work longer hours in order to 

make a living. By passing the Employee Free Choice Act, Congress 

can make it possible for all bus drivers to bargain collectively for 

better wages, benefits and working conditions, which will improve 

safety. I want to thank the Members of this Committee who voted 

recently to pass this important legislation. I urge you to call upon 

your colleagues in the Senate to do the same. 

On the issue of vehicle safety standards, tire blowouts and fires, 

which have previously been discussed, are big, big concerns for the 

members I represent. We need the better reporting that has been 

discussed of any of these incidents. We need more research on the 

causes of blowouts and fires in order to prevent them. We also need 

research on issues such as seat belts and airbags and window glazing to determine if there are improvements that can be made to 

current vehicle standards that could save lives. 

Another top concern for the industry and my members is security. The ATU strongly supports legislation introduced by the leadership of this Committee that would provide significant funding for 

both operating and capital expenditures to enhance the security of 

our Nation’s intercity bus network. While the threat of terrorism 

against our industry is real and must be addressed, we must also 

take measures to protect bus drivers from everyday assaults. 

In this realm, we urge Congress to clarify provisions of the Federal criminal code to ensure that crimes against intercity bus employees are treated the same as crimes against transit, school bus, 

and charter bus operators. 

Further, we must revise incident reporting requirements for 

intercity bus operations to include assaults against employees. This 

will allow us to determine the extent of the problem and to identify 

measures to address it. 

Finally, I want to urge the Committee to adopt a national ground 

transportation policy that will ensure that all American citizens in 

urban and rural communities alike have access to safe and affordable transportation, especially in emergency situations. Since deregulation of the industry, we have seen the abandonment of service to thousands of communities across the U.S. In many cases, 

Greyhound was the last remaining means of public transportation. 

Now, citizens in these communities are left without necessary public transportation. 

The tragic events of 9/11 and of Hurricane Katrina demonstrate 

the importance of having buses available across the U.S. to safely 

32

transport people out of harm’s way. A strong national bus program 

would meet this need. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I would be happy 

to take questions. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Hamilton. 

Ms. Gillan? 

TESTIMONY OF JACQUELINE S. GILLAN, VICE PRESIDENT, 

ADVOCATES FOR HIGHWAY AND AUTO SAFETY 

Ms. GILLAN. Thank you very much. 

Good morning, Chairman DeFazio and Representative Duncan. 

Thank you very much for having these hearings. I am Jackie 

Gillan, Vice President of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, 

a coalition of consumer health, safety, and insurance companies 

working together to improve safety on our highways. 

Motorcoach safety is a serious concern for anyone who uses this 

growing and affordable mode of transportation. Unfortunately, 

when it comes to motorcoach safety, consumers are forced to travel 

wearing a blindfold. 

The recent bus crash involving a college baseball team points out 

several major issues that need to be examined in this crash, such 

as the role highway design may have contributed to the confusion 

of the bus driver; also the design and structure of motorcoaches 

lacks state of the art safety systems that could better protect occupants in a serious crash. For example, many motorcoach fatalities 

occur because occupants are ejected from the vehicle because of a 

lack of seat belts and advance glazing on windows, and weak bus 

roofs. 

Finally, there are the issues I will address this morning relating 

to the chronic and continuing failures of the Federal Motor Carrier 

Safety Administration to exercise its legal authority to regulate the 

safety of the motorcoach industry and protect the public. 

Motorcoaches with the capacity to carry up to 58 people and log 

large numbers of vehicle miles every year are really the commuter 

airlines of the highways. Yet motorcoach safety is not being held 

to the same high standards as aviation safety, both for operators 

and for vehicle safety oversight. 

Let me briefly highlight some of these failings. First, there is no 

reliable information on State bus inspection programs. Even 

though Congress passed the law in 1980 requiring the Secretary of 

Transportation to prescribe standards for annual or more frequent 

inspection of commercial motor vehicles, including motorcoaches, as 

of 2001 only 25 of the 50 States had approved periodic bus inspection programs, and that was the last year we could get information 

off the FMCSA web site. 

I am pleased this morning that Administrator Hill mentioned 

that beginning this year, FMCSA will require every State to have 

a bus inspection program. That is really 20 years overdue. 

FMCSA relies on its SafeStat system to identify which motor carriers present the highest risks of having crashes and of committing 

motor carrier safety regulatory violations, but this is a very flawed 

system. Recent evaluations by the DOT Inspector General and Oak 

Ridge National Laboratory criticized the system for not being objective. Many motor carriers are mistakenly identified as high-risk 

33

safety risks, when they are not. Many motor carriers fail to be 

identified as high-risk safety risks when they are. And the data 

used is completely unreliable. 

Third, FMCSA conducts too few compliance reviews and too 

many of these compliance reviews are out of date. FMCSA is required by law to assign safety ratings to all motor carries, but has 

never come close to that goal. In 2005, out of the nearly 20,000 

motor carriers transporting passengers with the agency, only 547 

compliance reviews were conducted. Executive Coach Luxury Travel, the motorcoach company involved in the recent crash in Georgia, had a satisfactory rating, but that was assigned on January 

31, 2001. We believe that a safety rating assigned more than six 

years ago is not a reliable guide to a motor carrier’s safety quality. 

In fact, in their safety rating that was assigned, one of the four 

safety evaluation scoring areas was left blank. 

My testimony includes a sample that we did of nine States, and 

looking at the compliance reviews and safety ratings for those motorcoach companies. Oregon had 23 motorcoach companies register 

in the State. Of these, 12 had satisfactory ratings within the last 

five years, but not one of the 12 motorcoach companies with a satisfactory rating had scores in all four safety evaluation areas. Oregon still has one company that got a safety rating back in 1986, 

and five motorcoach companies registered in the State were not 

rated at all. 

In Tennessee, we found 78 registered motorcoach companies, and 

one-third were not rated. 

Another important issue is there are no training requirements 

for the operator of a bus responsible for the lives of 55 people on 

board. There is no certification needed to apply for an entry level 

CDL, and no instruction is needed to seek and gain the additional 

special endorsement to operate a motor coach in interstate commerce. 

Other areas that will affect motorcoach safety are clearly the 

issue of the pilot program, when we see NAFTA and CAFTA bus 

operations in the United States. I won’t discuss that, but it is certainly dealt with in my testimony. There are still serious problems 

with motorcoach passenger companies coming across the border. 

At the end of my testimony, we have many conclusions and recommendations. Clearly, every State needs to have a bus inspection 

program. We need to accelerate the reform of data reporting. We 

need to make sure that compliance reviews are done. No motorcoach company should receive a satisfactory rating unless all four 

safety evaluation areas have been completed. 

We also need to ensure that there is adequate entry level and advanced motorcoach driver training, and that we need to ensure that 

the CAFTA motor carriers that will be coming into the United 

States are subject to the Section 350 requirements for Mexico-domiciled motor carriers. 

And lastly, we need to do a lot more to improve Federal motor 

vehicle safety standards for bus and motorcoach crashworthiness, 

especially to prevent unnecessary deaths and injuries due to occupant ejection. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay, thank you. 

34

Just following up on your testimony, so you are saying that if I 

had a commercial driver’s license, and I applied to a carrier, there 

is no training required on the bus that I might operate? 

Ms. GILLAN. No. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. None? 

Ms. GILLAN. If you get your CDL, and you wish to drive a motorcoach, to get that additional endorsement on your CDL to allow you 

to do that, it is a multiple choice test. There is no skills requirement. DOT issued a rule on entry level driver training some years 

ago. It was so weak that Advocates and other safety groups sued. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously overturned it. Two years 

later, they still have not issued any basic skills requirements for 

entry level CDLs or for motorcoach operators. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So what do they say? Are they working on it? 

Ms. GILLAN. I don’t know. I guess I should have planted that 

question to find out. We are certainly anxious to find out. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. The Committee will follow up on that. 

Mr. Hamilton, do you want to tell us what your members, what 

kind of training they have at Greyhound? 

Mr. HAMILTON. At Greyhound, and also at Peter Pan Lines, we 

are very proud of the training program that we have. It is peer 

training. The experienced drivers train the new applicants. It is a 

very extensive program. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Do they actually drive the vehicles? 

Mr. HAMILTON. They actually drive the vehicles. When I became 

a Greyhound bus driver 35 years ago, the first thing that we did 

was go out and drive a bus in a parking lot in Minneapolis. There 

is a lot of newfangled stuff that they use these days that we didn’t 

have when I first was brought on. But it took four weeks, with the 

first just driving in areas that could suffer no harm, and then over 

the road, and also extensive training dealing with passengers as 

well. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Do either Mr. Crean or Mr. Scott want to 

address that issue? 

Yes, Mr. Scott? 

Mr. SCOTT. We have a 40 hour training class that we put all new 

hires through, which includes classroom and behind the wheel programs. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Great. And we have already heard about Peter 

Pan? 

Mr. CREAN. Yes, but I would just add to that. Our is a six to 

eight week training program. They do drive the bus before they get 

out there. They are with a senior instructor. In addition to operating the coach, there are other factors that we also throw in there, 

and that is the onset of safety, security, customer relations, and 

most importantly Americans with disabilities. They go through that 

amount of training as well. 

Again, we are in the people business. We are into delivering customer service. So in a lot of aspects, our driver is similar to a pilot. 

He needs to know how to interface and react with his passengers 

in the event of an emergency, and how to make sure that customer 

comes back again and rides our coach. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Crean, in your testimony I found something interesting. It just sort of rang a bell with me. Many years ago, I took 

35

a degree in gerontology and worked in counseling gerontology. 

What I found was an interesting phenomena, which at the nursing 

home where I worked, which was a very prestigious nursing home 

in the San Francisco area, the inspectors seemed to stay around a 

really long time. 

So I asked some of the senior staff, I said, are we having problems? They said, oh, no, this is just really kind of a pleasant environment for them. They really don’t want to be out in some of those 

holes in Oakland and other places where there are unbelievable 

problems that are going to cause them a lot of work. It is not a 

pleasant place to be. 

I found in your testimony where you say that larger carriers end 

up becoming the victim of increased compliance reviews when the 

so-called unsafe carriers have an accident. Is that really your experience? Suddenly, you haven’t had the accident, you have a training 

program, but suddenly the inspectors are showing up at your operation instead of putting more scrutiny on new entrants and/or 

these other lower budget kind of operators. 

Mr. CREAN. Yes. Consider the fact that I am on the East Coast 

and we have a large number of curbside carriers. Those curbside 

carriers make the news quite often as a result of accidents, operating under unsafe conditions, and so forth. So as a result of that, 

we see an increase in roadside inspections. 

Well, that increase in roadside inspections basically affects myself and Greyhound, who operate on those roads each and every 

day. We certainly don’t operate routes to avoid those inspection 

sites. We go through them. 

These smaller carriers who have one or two buses, the chances 

of seeing a roadside inspection are slim to none. The only way they 

are going to catch up with them by——

Mr. DEFAZIO. Do they stop every bus when they do a roadside 

inspection? 

Mr. CREAN. Not every bus. It depends on what they are looking 

for. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So if they saw a Peter Pan Bus come, they could 

say, well, we know Peter Pan is a high end operator; we are going 

to let them go by; we are going to wait for one of these low end 

operators to come rattling up blowing blue smoke out the exhaust. 

Mr. CREAN. Well, Mr. Chairman, that is if that low end operator 

takes that route. These roadside inspections are on major highways. There are other ways to avoid those inspection sites, and 

some go to the trouble to purposely avoid those inspection sites. So 

if one of those individuals flips a bus or is involved in an accident, 

we see the publicity of increasing inspections. What happens is I 

see a large number of inspections show up at our South Station 

Terminal let’s say to do safety checks on the very drivers who, before they are even dispatched, their logs, license and so forth are 

checked. We are not going to allow them to operate should they not 

be. 

So really, we are inspecting the people who don’t need the inspecting. We need to go deeper into the trenches and start looking 

at these other carriers. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So we need a little better intel on the part of where 

they are targeting their inspections, like really trying to track 

36

down some of these curbside folks and catch them as they are beginning a route, before they can disperse. Are they using CBs or 

something to communicate with each other to find out where the 

inspections are at so they can avoid them by changing routes or 

those sorts of things? Or are the inspections always in the same 

places on the same routes, so they know if we just stay off that 

highway, it is very unlikely we will get inspected? 

Mr. CREAN. Most of the inspections are usually in the same 

places. We have pushed FMCSA to do destination inspections, such 

as at amusement parks or so forth. That is where you are catching 

a lot of these smaller carriers. But again, in some instances these 

smaller carriers will drop their people off and leave just to avoid 

the inspection. But those are the people they need to get to. Those 

are the people they need to look at. 

In my feeling, to walk into a company and look at a file or a vehicle within the first 10 or 15 minutes, you are going to know whether that company has a safety program or not, first of all, by introducing them to a safety person. Companies that you walk in that 

don’t have driver files, no drug and alcohol program, it is pretty obvious and the paint is on the wall that there are no safety standards. That place just simply operates for a profit and a profit only. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. You said one other thing that caught my attention, 

SafeStat. You said maybe SafeStat can identify people, but there 

is no follow up or enforcement once we have identified these problem people. 

Mr. CREAN. Yes. If you go online to the SafeStat site, you can see 

the various curbside carriers who have been inspected, whose safety rating is extremely high [sic], which pretty much characterizes 

them as an unsafe carrier, yet they continue operation day to day, 

and pretty much put the rest of us in jeopardy. 

There is no action taken, and there is no consequence. What is 

the point of complying if there really is no consequence? We see the 

point of complying because we need to comply. It makes sense, and 

it is good all around business. But for other companies, it is more 

just seen as a cost of doing business, and safety should be looked 

at. We are pretty much the other way, concerned about the innocent lives of thousands of people each and every day who travel on 

the highway. Quite honestly, some of these carriers really don’t 

care. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Ms. Gillan, you talked about receiving a satisfactory rating only if you are satisfactory in every category. I think 

that goes to a line of questioning that I was pursuing with the Administrator, where although your drivers may be unsatisfactory, if 

they didn’t go out and look at your equipment, which they don’t, 

but they rated it as satisfactory because the paperwork said it was 

maintained, then we wouldn’t get an unsatisfactory rating for that 

company. Is that what you are trying to get at here? 

Ms. GILLAN. Yes, absolutely. There are four categories that they 

have to rate them on, and yet if you look at the satisfactory ratings, for instance, in Oregon and with the company that was involved in the crash, many of the boxes are empty. So then you have 

to ask yourself, how do you get a satisfactory rating if these boxes 

are left empty, such as in the case of the company involved in the 

crash, where safety management, that box was left empty. 

37

So how can you get a satisfactory rating if there is nothing in 

there indicating that your safety management systems and procedures are out adequate. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. All right. 

Mr. Duncan? 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

In all these areas, what we need is balance and common sense. 

I say that from this standpoint. Your industry is a little bit unusual in that many, many industries are just going more and more 

towards the big giants. Any industry that is very highly regulated, 

first the little guys go out of business, and then the medium sized 

ones, and the industries end up in the hands of a few big giants. 

And you still have a lot of small businesses in your industry. 

Now, a lot of times, the biggest companies want more regulations 

so that the little guys will be run out, and the regulators like more 

regulations because it gives them more power. Plus, it is a lot easier for a Government regulator to inspect one large company than 

it is to inspect 100 small companies. 

But there are problems with that. First, you hurt a lot of small 

businesses. Secondly, you drive up the price of whatever service is 

being provided. I mean, I can give you many examples, but in 1978, 

there were 157 small coal companies in East Tennessee. Then we 

opened up an Office of Surface Mining there, and now there are no 

small coal companies. 

I am wondering, Mr. Crean, do you believe that there are not 

enough safety regulations that FMCSA should institute more safety regulations? 

Mr. CREAN. No, sir. There are safety regulations. They just need 

to start enforcing the regulations. The only clause I will put to that 

is there needs to be some bite in it. There is no reason to comply 

if there is no consequence. For some of these carriers, there is little. 

Mr. DUNCAN. How much does it cost your company to comply 

with the ADA regulations? Do you have any idea? 

Mr. CREAN. Well, it is an additional cost on our vehicles of about 

$30,000 to $35,000 to have that bus equipped with a lift. In addition to that, there is additional training for the driver that costs 

us about $8,000 to train a driver. We hire anywhere from 20 to 30 

drivers per year, and we buy about 10 to 15 buses per year. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Scott, besides the regulations, are there other 

pressures on your company to have safe buses and safe drivers? 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, first of all, I would agree with Mr. Crean here 

that there are regulations that are on the books that I believe are 

effective regulations, but they need better enforcement. I believe 

that FMCSA needs more resources to be able to do that. 

I also agree that destination inspections is a great way to inspect 

buses because Disney World is a good example. For instance we 

being located in Florida, you can go there on any given day and 

probably see 100 buses there. So they know where they go, and 

that is the best place to get them. 

But the biggest pressure I would say on our business is our own 

success, to continue to succeed. We have been in business since 

1983, and I know Peter Pan Bus Lines and Greyhound as well 

have long, distinguished histories. You don’t get that way by doing 

38

things unsafe, whether or not FMCSA has ever been in to visit you 

or not. 

You have to perform and your customers aren’t going to ride with 

you if you don’t provide safe equipment, training drivers, uniformed drivers, clean equipment, and on-time service. So really it 

is your own policies and procedures and the standards that you set 

for yourself, if you want to be successful in this bus industry or not. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I will add to that. I am very pro-business, but unlike some of them, I decide I am pro-trial lawyers to a certain extent, too, because I can tell you that that is a tremendous pressure 

or incentive to operate a safe company. You certainly don’t want to 

be sued, do you? 

Mr. SCOTT. No, not at all. We obviously carry the highest levels 

of financial responsibility of anybody on the road. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I was going to ask you about that. I understand 

from some of these small bus companies that their insurance rates 

have gone up tremendously since 9/11. Have your rates gone up as 

well? Would you give us some idea roughly of what we are talking 

about? 

Mr. SCOTT. Prior to 9/11, I was paying $3,800 per bus annually 

for $5 million worth of coverage. Today, I am paying closer to 

$10,000. 

Mr. DUNCAN. About $10,000 per bus? 

Mr. SCOTT. Right. 

Mr. DUNCAN. So it has just about tripled. 

Mr. SCOTT. Pretty close to it, yes. And many carriers choose to 

carry additional umbrella policies as well, which we also do that, 

just to ensure that we are providing adequate levels of protection 

for our customers and the traveling public. 

Mr. DUNCAN. And it has gone up that much in years of relatively 

low inflation. We have probably had about 20 percent at the most 

inflation since that time, 15 percent to 20 percent. 

In your testimony, you said you don’t believe that seat belts 

would make motorcoaches safer. Would you explain to me why you 

say that? 

Mr. SCOTT. They need to be tested. Honestly, it really can’t be 

said at this point whether they would make motorcoaches safer or 

not. I think that without adequate testing and without science and 

statistics to support the proven safety of seat belts in motorcoaches, 

I think it is a dangerous presumption to move forward with an untested technology, when the safety of our industry is as good as it 

already is. 

Now, everybody will agree that one fatality is one fatality too 

many, but there are unintended consequences that can sometimes 

arise when you do things that are not tested. The margin of error 

for failure on the side of improving motorcoach safety with an untested technology is greater than the margin for improvement. 

I can say that this industry, if there is the technology out there 

that is proven and tested to save one life, this is an industry that 

will get behind it. There is no question about that. Our future and 

our lives are built on that. But like I have said, when we have an 

average of 10 fatalities a year, which one is too many, we better 

make sure that it works, to make sure that we are truly adding 

to the safety, and not detracting from it. 

39

Mr. DUNCAN. Who are these curbside operators, Mr. Hamilton, or 

any of you? Are they immigrants, legal or illegal? 

Mr. HAMILTON. There are all sorts of curbside operators. In the 

Northeast primarily, they started out running service from Chinatown to Chinatown in New York and Boston, New York and Philadelphia, New York and Washington, DC. 

I think that there has been a lot of investigation about who they 

are. They are obviously very, very well funded. 

Mr. DUNCAN. The Chairman said organized crime is involved. Do 

you that is true? 

Mr. HAMILTON. That is the common belief. I certainly can’t prove 

that, but they are obviously very well-heeled. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Does your union, besides whatever training these 

companies might give to their drivers, does your union do things 

to encourage drivers to be safer? 

Mr. HAMILTON. Yes. For one thing, we negotiate with Greyhound. 

The rules that we have negotiated with them exceed the Federal 

standards in hours of service and, well, I am not sure how many 

other areas, but also the union exists to make sure that our drivers 

are protected. So we hold the company to a very, very high standard. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Ms. Gillan, do you agree with the Chairman of 

NTSB when he said that he thinks this is the safest form of transportation? 

Ms. GILLAN. I think that motorcoach transportation is safe. However, FMCSA’s jurisdiction is over all passenger-carrying carriers. 

So while I think that the statistics and data on motorcoach transportation look good, that is not always the case for some of the 

smaller buses, the jitneys and some of the other carriers out there 

that are transporting passengers. 

I do think, though, that the recent crash of the baseball team 

points out that there is certainly a lot more that we should be 

doing. As I said in my statement, intercity motorcoach transportation is really becoming almost like our commuter airlines on the 

highways, in that, as my testimony points out, I think that there 

are some really serious flaws and shortcomings in how the Federal 

Motor Carrier Safety Administration is regulating and overseeing 

the safety of this industry, and there is a lot of room for improvement. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, I will just get this off my chest while I can, 

but these insurance companies are a little bit of a pet peeve of 

mine because, I mean, they have this myth going on medical malpractice. I read where on medical malpractice, the amount of judgments in the last five years has gone up 4.9 percent, while the premiums went up 131 percent, I think it was. 

And then when you tell me that your insurance premiums on the 

buses have gone up from $3,800 per bus, Mr. Scott, to $10,000 per 

bus, in an industry where the statistics just don’t justify that at all. 

And all these Government departments and agencies are throwing 

out the word security and this greatly exaggerated threat of terrorism to get more funding. And these insurance companies are 

just doing greatly unjustified increases in premiums. It is just totally ridiculous, really. 

40

But at any rate, Mr. Chairman, that is all I have. Thank you for 

calling this hearing. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Representative Duncan. I couldn’t 

agree with you more on the insurance issue. That really caught my 

attention. We had the airline CEOs in and had them all lined up, 

and they were talking about the need to continue the terrorism 

risk insurance. And then they talked about how much their general 

liability had gone up. It had gone up 400 percent. 

I said, well, if the Government is assuming the terrorism risk, 

and there haven’t been any major crashes, why would your general 

liability have gone up by 400 percent? And so I asked them, and 

this is where I am going to ask the gentleman from Tennessee, if 

they would advocate for my bill to take away the antitrust exemption, which the insurance industry enjoys. I have a bill that I will 

bring to the gentleman’s attention on that, because you can’t 

collude with Peter Pan, and Greyhound can’t collude with Peter 

Pan and set the market. You’d go to jail. 

But the insurance industry can and does legally collude, and say, 

hey look, if you write lower bus policies, you might take some of 

my business. How about we both just keep our clients? We will 

keep our clients, you keep yours, but let’s jack it up 50 percent. 

Okay, what a deal. They can do that. 

Just to frame it as a question to the two operators, have they 

given you any rationale about, boy, there have been some huge settlements here. You won’t believe our losses in the line of bus insurance, and that is why it has gone up 300 percent. Have you heard 

from your carriers along those lines? 

Mr. SCOTT. I think what you find in bus insurance these days is it is true that judgments have gone up. Where typically in a $5 

million bus policy, that working layer of insurance was probably 

zero to $100,000 or in there. And now over the last 10 years, you 

have seen that expand to include that first $1 million is the working layer. And now you are seeing some cases that it is going beyond that. 

So I do believe that judgments have gone up. But I do believe 

that after 9/11, the markets went down, and insurance companies 

need to make there money somewhere, and if they are not making 

it in the market, bus insurance is an attractive industry for insurance companies that don’t understand the bus market because 

there are large dollars in premiums there. So they can look at that 

as somewhat of a cash cow and say, hey, we can write bus insurance and collect a lot of premium, but they don’t understand how 

to manage bus claims. 

That is when some of them really get a pretty good licking and 

will pull the market out, and that allows for a lot of market swings 

in terms of fluctuations in insurance dollars. But since 9/11, it went 

up dramatically. It seems to have leveled off. I haven’t seen any 

significant increases in the last two years. It does seem to have leveled off. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I can’t remember, was it Mr. Crean who talked 

about the destination inspections? Or was it you, Mr. Scott? You 

say you know where, say, these rogue companies are going, and 

that is the place to get them. Maybe it was you, Mr. Scott, that 

talked about it. 

41

Mr. SCOTT. Well, just to use the example of Florida. If a bus is 

coming to Orlando, you can bet it is going to be going to one of the 

theme parks at some point in time. You have Disney World, Universal Studios, MGM Studios. You have all of these theme parks 

there. That is the best place to do them. 

A roadside inspection where you are taking a bus off of the highway loaded with passengers is not a very attractive situation for 

the passengers or FMCSA or the bus operator. But when the passengers are at their destination, the bus most oftentimes is going 

to be sitting there for a good few hours. That is the best time to 

do it. 

And if there is a situation where the bus is going to be put out 

of service, there is an opportunity to replace it, whereby the passengers are not inconvenienced. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. That is an excellent suggestion. Mr. Hill is no 

longer here, but we will make certain that perhaps they need to 

just circulate their folks down into Chinatown or wherever, and 

find out where the buses are headed, and then say, they are headed to Charles Street in Boston. Why don’t you meet them there at 

6 o’clock? 

I think that seems to me an excellent suggestion on how we 

might be able to, as opposed to setting up on major highways with 

the complications of having passengers on board, and only catching 

the companies that follow a fixed route and aren’t trying to evade 

them. It seems to me to be a little more nimble, I guess. That is 

an excellent suggestion. 

I want to thank the panel. I think you have raised a number of 

issues here that need to be addressed. This Committee will continue to be persistent in this area. 

Thanks very much for your testimony and we appreciate your 

time. 

[Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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