FMCSA’s primary mission is to reduce the number and severity of crashes involving large commercial trucks and buses conducting interstate commerce. It carries out this mission in the following ways: issuing, administering, and enforcing federal motor carrier safety and hazardous materials regulations; and gathering and analyzing data on motor carriers, drivers, and vehicles, among other things. FMCSA also takes enforcement actions and funds and oversees enforcement activities at the state level through Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program grants. For-hire motor carriers are required to register with FMCSA and obtain federal operating authority before operating in interstate commerce. Applicants for passenger carrier operating authority must submit certain information to FMCSA, including contact information and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) number, and must certify that they have in place mandated safety procedures. After publication of the applicant’s information in the FMCSA Register, a 10-calendar-day period begins in which anyone can challenge the application. Within 90 days of the publication, the carrier’s insurance company must file proof of the carrier’s insurance with FMCSA. Applicants must also designate a process agent, a representative upon whom court orders may be served in any legal proceeding. After FMCSA has approved the application, insurance, and process agent filings, and the protest period has ended without any protests, applicants are issued operating authority. FMCSA ensures that carriers, including motor coach carriers, comply with safety regulations primarily through compliance reviews of carriers already in the industry and safety audits of carriers that have recently started operations. Compliance reviews and safety audits help FMCSA determine whether carriers are complying with its safety regulations and, if not, to take enforcement action against them, including placing carriers out of service. FMCSA makes its compliance determination based on performance in six areas: one area is the carrier’s crash rate, and the other five areas involve the carrier’s compliance with regulations, such as insurance coverage, driver qualifications, and vehicle maintenance and inspections. Carriers are assigned one of three Carrier Safety Ratings based on their compliance with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSR). These ratings include “satisfactory,” for a motor carrier that has in place and functioning adequate safety management controls to meet federal safety fitness standards; “conditional,” for a motor carrier that does not have adequate safety management controls in place to ensure compliance with the safety fitness standard, that could result in a violation of federal safety regulations; or “unsatisfactory,” for a motor carrier that does not have adequate safety management controls in place to ensure compliance with the safety fitness standard, which has resulted in a violation of federal safety regulations. Carriers receiving an unsatisfactory rating have either 45 days (for carriers transporting hazardous materials in quantities that require placarding or transporting passengers) or 60 days (for all other carriers) to address the safety concerns. If a carrier fails to demonstrate it has taken corrective action acceptable to FMCSA, FMCSA will revoke its new entrant registration and issue an out-of-service order, which prohibits the carrier from operating until the violations are corrected. Further fines are assessed if it is discovered that it is operating despite the out-of-service order. Federal law requires new carriers to undergo a new-entrant safety audit within 18 months of when the company begins to operate. Carriers are then monitored on an ongoing basis using various controls that include but are not limited to annual vehicle inspections and driver qualification regulations. However, FMCSA may suspend a company or vehicle’s operation at any time by ordering it out of service if it determines that an imminent safety hazard exists. (An imminent hazard means any condition of vehicle, employee, or commercial motor vehicle operations which substantially increases the likelihood of serious injury or death if not discontinued immediately.) In addition, FMCSA orders carriers out of service for failure to pay civil penalties levied by FMCSA, failing to take required corrective actions related to prior compliance reviews, or failing to schedule a safety audit. Out-of-service carriers are supposed to cease operations and not resume operations until FMCSA determines that they have corrected the conditions that rendered them out of service. If a carrier fails to comply with or disregards an out-of-service order, FMCSA may assess a civil monetary penalty each time a vehicle is operated in violation of the order. FMCSA and state law enforcement agencies use several methods to ensure that carriers ordered out of service, including motor coach companies, do not continue to operate. For example, FMCSA and its state partners monitor data on roadside inspections, moving violations, and crashes to identify carriers that may be violating an out-of-service order. FMCSA will visit some suspect carriers that it identifies by monitoring crash and inspection data to determine whether those carriers violated their orders. Also, recently, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance began to require checking for carriers operating under an out-of-service order during roadside inspections and to take enforcement action against any that are. However, given the large size of the industry, the nation’s extensive road network, and the relatively small size of federal and state enforcement staffs, it is difficult to catch motor coach carriers that are violating out-of- service orders. In addition, some carriers change their identities by changing their names and obtaining new DOT numbers—these carriers are generally referred to as reincarnating carriers—to avoid being caught. Our analysis of FMCSA data for fiscal years 2007 and 2008 identified 20 motor coach companies that likely reincarnated from “out-of-service” carriers. This represents about 9 percent of the approximately 220 motor coach carriers that FMCSA ordered out of service for those fiscal years. The analysis was based on two or more exact matches of data for the new entrant with the data for the out-of-service carriers on the following categories: company name, owner/officer name, address, phone number, cell phone number, fax number, vehicle identification number, and driver names. These 20 motor coach companies registered with FMCSA before FMCSA developed processes specifically for detecting reincarnated bus companies that were established subsequent to the Sherman, Texas, crash (see next section). The number of potential reincarnated motor coach carriers is understated because (1) our analysis was based on exact matches, so it could not find links if abbreviations were used or typos occurred in the data, (2) FMCSA only provided us data on vehicles and drivers when an accident or inspection took place, and thus the provided FMCSA data does not include the entire population of vehicles or drivers for either new entrants or out-of-service carriers, and (3) our analysis could not identify owners who purposely provided FMCSA bogus or otherwise deceptive information on the application (e.g., ownership) to hide the reincarnation from the agency. Although the number of reincarnated motor coach carriers that we could identify was relatively small, the threat these operators pose to the public has proven deadly. According to FMCSA officials, registration and enforcement policies at the time of the Sherman, Texas, crash, reincarnation was relatively simple to do and hard to detect. As a result, motor coach carriers known to be safety risks were continuing to operate, such as the company that was involved in the bus crash in Sherman, Texas. Five of the reincarnated carriers we identified were still operating as of May 2009. Our investigation found one of them had not received a safety evaluation and two carriers had been given a conditional rating after the agency determined its safety management controls were inadequate. The remaining two motor coach carriers were deemed satisfactory in a FMCSA compliance review because FMCSA inspectors were likely not aware of the potential reincarnations. We referred all five companies to FMCSA for further investigation. Based on our review of FMCSA data, we found that the agency already identified six of the 20 reincarnated motor coach carriers and ordered them out of service. The agency discovered them while performing a crash investigation (as in the case of the bus accident in Sherman, Texas), compliance reviews, or other processes. In addition, new carriers are subject to a safety audit within 18 months. Several of the reincarnated carriers we identified were small businesses located in states neighboring Mexico and making trips across the border. Our investigation also determined that all of the reincarnated motor coach carriers we identified were directly related to companies that received fines for safety problems shortly before being ordered out of service. Based on our analysis of the FMCSA data, we believe they reincarnated to avoid paying these fines and continue their livelihood. For example, we found instances where carriers continued to operate despite being ordered out of service for failure to pay their fines. In fact, one carrier was operating for several months after being placed out of service. We believe that these carriers reincarnated into new companies to evade fines and avoid performing the necessary corrective actions. We attempted to contact the owners to ask why they reincarnated but were unable to reach many of them. For the six owners that we did interview none said that they had shut down their old companies and opened new ones to evade the out-of-service orders. Table 1 summarizes information on 10 of the 20 cases that we investigated. Appendix II provides details on 10 others we examined. Appendix III provides a summary of the key data elements that matched on the new entrants that were substantially related to out-of-service carriers. The following narratives provide detailed information on three of the more egregious cases we examined. Case 1: The owner of a Houston motor coach company registered a new carrier with the same phone number, fax number, and cell phone number as the old one. The new company started in March 2007, 8 months before FMCSA ordered the old company out of service. The two companies appear to have operated simultaneously for a period of time.