In an investigation spurred by increasing concern over motor coach safety, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has closed over 50 different bus lines that have been found to be unsafe. Specific violations have included companies employing drivers whose licenses have been suspended and those that are requiring drivers to drive routes of over 800 miles without taking the required break.
According to Anne S. Ferro, the administrator of the federal agency responsible for regulating bus company operations, the companies that have been shuttered include recognizable names in the industry. With motor coaches providing transportation for everybody from church groups and seniors to tourists and scouting expeditions, increasing numbers of well-publicized accidents are drawing much more scrutiny, and this is what drove the investigation.
According to national statistics, as any passengers travel via motor coach each year in the United States as fly on domestic airlines. That number is approaching 700 million for each industry. With so many people travelling via bus and an increasing number of companies continuing to operate despite poor safety records, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration decided to launch “Operation Quick Strike”. The investigation involved 250 companies that had a record of safety defects. With approximately 4,000 companies falling under its regulation, the agency admits that they had let many companies slip through the cracks.
The operation involved training dozens of inspectors to take a closer look at the operations of the motor coach companies in question, and as a result over 1,300 buses were inspected. Twenty five percent of those were removed from the road.
According to Ferro, the motor coach industry is highly competitive, and many companies were putting safety “by the wayside in order to compete”. Though only one of those companies that were shut down had a record of a passenger death, other problems that were discovered included maintenance lapses, hours-of-service violations and vehicles operating for days despite the constant presence of a warning light.
According to Ferro, the National Transportation Safety Board instigated the investigation after finding that the agency had not taken enough action against at risk companies in the past. In those instances, which involved both buses and trucking companies, people were killed following a lack of action against companies that had previously been found to have safety violations. The in-depth inspections provided by Operation Quick Strike amended that problem.