[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
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
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia JOHN L. MICA, Florida
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon DON YOUNG, Alaska
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
Columbia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JERROLD NADLER, New York WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
CORRINE BROWN, Florida VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
BOB FILNER, California STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, JERRY MORAN, Kansas
California GARY G. MILLER, California
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa Carolina
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
RICK LARSEN, Washington SAM GRAVES, Missouri
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
JULIA CARSON, Indiana JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine Virginia
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California TED POE, Texas
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
DORIS O. MATSUI, California CONNIE MACK, Florida
NICK LAMPSON, Texas JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio York
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania Louisiana
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
JOHN J. HALL, New York
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
JERRY McNERNEY, California
(ii)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT AND PIPELINES
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JERROLD NADLER, New York DON YOUNG, Alaska
JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
California HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania GARY G. MILLER, California
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
JULIA CARSON, Indiana HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York Carolina
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania Virginia
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania TED POE, Texas
JERRY MCNERNEY, California DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
BOB FILNER, California CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland Louisiana
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
DORIS O. MATSUI, California THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa JOHN L. MICA, Florida
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona (Ex Officio)
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
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
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34790.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34790.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34790.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34790.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34790.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34790.006
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
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.
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. 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 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, 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.
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 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 vehicles. 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.
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 SAFETEA-LU, 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 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 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 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, 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?
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 DC-3 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
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 astute 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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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