New testimony given March 20, 2007 to the Congressional SubCommittee on Transportation/Highways by participants: FMCSA, NTSB, Chris Crean (Director of Safety & Security, Peter Pan) Bruce Hamilton (Pres./Business Agent ATU 1700 Greyhound Union local) and two other guests.

Discussion included curbside operators, lack of enforcement and compliance with federal laws and regulations, bus safety, passenger restraint systems, fire retardent systems, CDL english language requirements, as well as detailed analysis of recent bus accidents and fires in Texas, Georgia, etc.

Press Release of Subcommittee:General Press Release
Testimony of Ranking Republican:Representative Duncan testimony

Bruce Hamilton (ATU 1700 Pres.) testimony:Click here
Chris Crean (Peter Pan Safety Director) testimony: Click here
John Hill (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration:Director) testimony: Click here
Mark Rosenker (National Transportation Safety Board:Director) testimony: Click here
Brian Scott (Escot Bus Lines, Pres;United Motorcoach Association, Chairman) testimony: Click here
Jacqueline Gillan (Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety, VP) testimony: Click here

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the entire 3 hour meeting:

CONGRESSIONAL TRANSCRIPTS
Congressional Hearings
March 20, 2007

House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Holds Hearing on Motorcoach Safety

LIST OF PANEL MEMBERS AND WITNESSES

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DEFAZIO:
The subcommittee will come to order. Today, we're going to consider issues relating to motorcoach safety, and I appreciate the witnesses being here.

One of the witnesses has a -- the chairman of the NTSB has a fairly short timeline. We know that Mr. Hill is very generous with his time as he was last week, but we'll try not to keep either of you too long and meet your schedules. But we do appreciate your being here.

Last year, the committee held a hearing on the issue of curbside service. A number of issues relating to safety of the traveling public came up at that, and some of that, I believe -- I know is addressed in some of the testimony here today, and I still consider that to be an evolving issue that merits more attention by this committee, and we'll be discussing that.

You know, motorcoach travel is quite safe when compared to other modes, but even one avoidable death is too many, and I believe that there are improvements in the system that can be made that could avoid unnecessary death. We have on the record two -- well, we're going to have some testimony here about the Wilmer, Texas, issue and that horrible, horrible tragedy there and also some testimony regarding the Atlanta, Georgia, crash just earlier this month.

The NTSB has a number of recommendations relating to motor carrier or 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'll also have some discussion of the FMCSA's oversight which relates back to a couple of these tragedies and certainly an ongoing issue of the level of oversight also relating back to the curbside service which I mentioned earlier. So there's a lot of material to cover, and I look forward to your testimony.

And with that, I would recognize the ranking member for his opening remarks.

DUNCAN:
Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding the hearing today. Motorcoach safety is an area which is often overlooked until there is a serious accident and lives are lost, like the very tragic and very sad bus accident two weeks ago in Atlanta and other accidents.

You know, it's 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 seatbelt use on buses.

In my opinion, safety should be the top priority for motorcoach operators, and 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 their businesses.

When I was in the law practice, I represented a bus company that operated three buses, and all three of their drivers had driven well over a million miles each without any accidents. In fact, I think they were really closer to 5 million or 10 million miles without any accidents.

I'm concerned about imposing unnecessary burdens which may not have a safety impact on these small businesses, and 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's irresponsible to create more regulations simply for the appearance of safety.

The big guys, the big companies, can handle the cost 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's a very important topic, and I look forward to hearing the testimony from our two panels.

DEFAZIO:
OK. With that, we would move forward to our witnesses in the order in which they are listed, so that would be, first, Administrator Hill.

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, and 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 about the tragic crash on March the 2nd.

However, compliant or not, it is our agency's responsibility to implement programs to implement the safety of motorcoach transportation, and to that end, FMCSA has established a National Motorcoach Safety Program that emphasizes six areas: One, increasing the number of motorcoach compliance reviews; two, ensuring motorcoach companies have a higher priority within our compliance review prioritization system, known as SafeStat; three. 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 and vehicle safety.

FMCSA is focusing on motorcoach safety, and the compliance review numbers bear this out. In fiscal years '05 and '06, 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 ratings, or appear to run unsafely. We expect to complete a compliance review and assess a 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 the strike forces 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 quantity 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 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, FMCSA recently a statement to FMC field offices and our MCSAP partners reemphasizing that fires occurring in commercial vehicles, including buses, are crashes and must be reported to FMCSA. We're 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 the safety of passenger carriers. New entrant passenger carriers are now subject to an onsite 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 with the program is resource intensive and reaches only a small percentage of motor carriers.

So to improve our reach 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's 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.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you, Mr. Hill.

Chairman Rosenker, you are recognized. You may give your prepared remarks, or you may respond to statements made by the administration, and we'll certainly address things in questions. Thank you. Go ahead.

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 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'd 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 that number.

The issues that I'd 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 in 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 Bluffton 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, 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 exits to be opened easily and to 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 potential fire so that passengers might have time to escape, and, finally, establish acceptable egress times for motorcoaches.

Finally, I'd 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 a 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 safety fitness of motor carriers and, hopefully, 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'd be happy to respond to the questions.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you. We'll proceed now with the first round of questions.

Administrator Hill, you've heard Chairman Rosenker, particularly about the Wilmer crash, and I'm curious how -- or it wasn't a crash but a fatal accident with the bus catching fire. How is it that -- and the words are extraordinary that, not just the chairman, but I remember the NTSB used regarding the violations -- persistent, long- term violations by Global Limo. And 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? And since you did find deficiencies but allowed them to continue to operate, why wasn't there a follow-up?

HILL:
Mr. Chairman, the tragedy that we're talking about here was awful, and I wish that I could tell you a different story. But the satisfactory safety rating is something that happens in a snapshot in time, and 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.

And 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're working through the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 to do so, and we're planning on pilot testing this next year. We're starting rule-making processes this year on developing this to change the safety fitness process, and I am committing to this committee and to the Board that we are going to follow through on this initiative.

DEFAZIO:
Chairman Rosenker, would you respond to that? I mean, 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 FMCSA? And didn't the FMCSA find some deficiencies at the time of the original evaluation?

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, and that is the condition of the vehicle itself and also the driver, the capabilities 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.

DEFAZIO:
Do their 2010 changes give you some level of confidence that they will better address those -- what seems to me pretty simple and focused -- as opposed to bureaucratic evaluation? Is the bus safe, is the driver safe -- pretty simple stuff, right? I mean, does their new iteration of their safety inspection program get more at those root issues?

ROSENKER:
This appears to be a comprehensive examination of their processes and how they're going to improve it. I'm hoping -- now, I'm an optimist, but I can't tell you what's going to happen in three years and who may administer that program when it finally does come to pass.

DEFAZIO:
Administrator Hill, you heard that -- the condition of the vehicle itself and the driver. Do you feel that you are going to better address what seem to be -- what most Americans would think -- the two most important and fairly simple to evaluate issues for their traveling safety? You know, it's amazing to me that the old system, or the existing system, has been so deficient in these areas. So how is that going to be addressed with the new system?

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, or our staff does, or a state enforcement person goes out, they're 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're compliant with hours of service -- and that process, depending on the size of the carrier can take a considerable amount of time, or if it's a small carrier with one truck, it's a one or two-day process.

And 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've been trying to focus on is to use the compliance review to look at basic safety management controls and then the roadside inspections -- which, as I testified to this committee last week, we did over 3 million of those in the nation last year. Those roadside inspections feed into a data system that allows us then to evaluate safety 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's happening at the roadside, as opposed to just what's happening when we go in and do a snapshot in time review of that company's operation. So we believe that it will help, but this is going to be a very big process. It's going to be a big C change for the way we do business and the way the states do business.

DEFAZIO:
So you're 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's the way the agency works?

HILL:
Well, I'm saying that there are times that we inspect the vehicles, but it is not...

DEFAZIO:
Well, the random checks on the road -- you said how many last year?

HILL:
Three million.

DEFAZIO:
Out of how many operations -- what percent of operations?

HILL:
That is going to be...

DEFAZIO:
Given how many trucks and buses there are, it's got to be a pretty small percentage.

HILL:
It is.

DEFAZIO:
Right. OK. So instead of -- so 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're saying it takes too much time, and, basically, we're getting to a staffing issue, I believe, here.

HILL:
Well, it could be one factor. The other is the size of the carrier population that was expected to be done. And so what we're trying to do is look at all the data that we have available...

DEFAZIO:
Right. But, I mean, if you actually get, physically, to an operator, you would think, "Well" -- I mean, we don't get there very often -- in fact, again, I mean, I appreciate the fact that you're -- you know, I believe there may be a statutory deficiency here, that new operators can operate up to 18 months before they're inspected, a loophole being utilized by curbside folks, and you're trying to get to them within nine months. I mean, don't you think it should be before they begin operations?

Why would we say, "You're a startup. We know nothing about you. You've submitted your paperwork. We're going to actually come out and see if you're actually at that address" -- which, in the case of the curbside people, they often aren't -- "and, you know, 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?

HILL:
Mr. Chairman, if the committee feels, statutorily, that we need to take a look at that, I'll be glad to work with the committee and do so. I think when the...

DEFAZIO:
Well, do you think that would be prudent, I mean, just as a citizen who might consume this product? I mean, would you want to get on a bus of a new operator that no one -- you know, that had not been inspected?

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.

DEFAZIO:
Well, we need to look at that, but -- and then you can say it's 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'm a little -- I'm 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 would be happy to -- we'll have staff visit with you about that.

And then, secondly, just the issue of when audits are actually conducted, that it's just the paperwork audit -- I mean, I just think that, you know, going out and looking at the condition of some of the equipment is pretty key, and it seems to me that should also be included. And whether that requires some directive -- requires more staff -- I'm not sure how we get there, but I would like to examine that issue, too.

HILL:
Well, that particular piece, Mr. Chairman, we can take care of administratively, and we can definitely look at doing that a little bit more effectively in our new interim process.

DEFAZIO:
OK. Thank you.

DUNCAN:
Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, these are pretty impressive statistics. You've got 3,300 bus companies, 2.4 billion miles traveled by these companies, and 595 million trips. And as Chairman Rosenker said, it's probably the safest form of transportation, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.

On the other hand, everybody, no matter what their position, should always be trying to improve and get better, and we do want to try to make things as safe as possible. On the other hand, there's an appropriate balance in every area.

If you over-regulate a business, then you're going to raise the prices, and you're going to knock -- you could potentially knock a lot of poor and lower income people out of a form of transportation that's very, very important to them. So you have to take those into consideration, also.

But how frequently, Administrator Hill, are these -- on average, are these buses inspected?

HILL:
Congressman Duncan, we are inspecting about 26,000 -- last year, 26,000 at the roadside. Now, I need to caveat that. (OFF- MIKE), there was a prohibition against us doing inspections while the vehicle is in route, so we do it at point of origin or point of destination. We try to work...

DUNCAN:
Right, and there's a reason for that, because you didn't want to inconvenience all the passengers.

HILL:
Well, we're concerned about roadside safety.

DUNCAN:
Right.

HILL:
We don't want a truck or a busload of people sitting alongside the road...

DUNCAN:
That's right.

HILL:
... and we want to make sure that it's 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 and its guidance to improve motorcoach safety as a result of the curbside hearing and improve our oversight. And so we're really making sure that the states are much more involved in inspections of buses.

DUNCAN:
Well, I doubt that there's very many -- or there's probably not any -- agencies in the federal government that can say they've doubled their number of inspections from the previous year. That's quite an increase.

I do hope that because of this hearing, there's not pressure to suddenly start finding more violations. What I'm more impressed with is that if people do find problems, they put on their reports how quickly they were corrected. That's an important thing.

Chairman Rosenker, in your testimony, you named 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 that you would think is the most important?

ROSENKER:
I hate to begin the process of saying each of -- select a priority when all four of those, together, really is the answer to begin the process of preventing accidents all together, 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.

DUNCAN:
And you discussed the need for improved roof strength and easier to open emergency window exits. Are these design problems that you think -- how difficult do you think or how expensive do you think it would be to correct or improve those areas?

ROSENKER:
Well, as far as the pricing is concerned, we've not done a study on pricing. We just know what the results will be if, in fact, these are implemented. And when we're 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're looking for a result. The result that we're looking for is a stronger roof. We're 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're also looking for improved motorcoach occupant protection systems, and these would be an entirely new examination of how we want to restrain people in seats. Currently, we compartmentalize. That's a good system in a forward accident or in a rear-end accident. It's not a good system in a rollover.

So we don't have the answers, specifically. That's what NHTSA is supposed to do, and in a study that they've 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're not prescriptive in our recommendations. We're looking for a result.

And, finally, in the issue of egress, we want to make sure that in the event the bus is on its side, you're able to get out through its roof.

DUNCAN:
What did you feel was the most important lesson learned out of the Texas bus incident?

ROSENKER:
Clearly, in this case, preventive maintenance. There was no preventive maintenance in this case. It was "If something broke, we'd 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, and 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.

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 betting better or worse from what you found out or what your agency found out in those inspections?

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. And what we have found is that that has been a constant theme as we've done inspections through the years.

Now, what we've done in the last year, since the curbside bus hearing, is we have addressed some specific areas with those operators in the Northeast with a task force. And we have identified 24 curbside operators in the Northeast area, that we could identify, anyway, and of that, we have taken up some enforcement actions.

We have done safety compliance reviews on all of those but one, and that one is pending. And in that case, we have found two that have gone out of business after we visited them, and three have conditional ratings, and we've 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.

DUNCAN:
I remember that hearing, and you did have some operators in that area that the whole industry, I think, was upset about.

But at any rate, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Altmire, do you have questions? OK. No questions.

Ms. Capito?

CAPITO:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank the gentlemen for testifying. I'm 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'd like to ask two questions. One is the relationship between the NHTSA, the NTSB, and the FMCSA. I think a lot of times, people are working in the right direction, trying to improve and make suggestions for safety, for driver safety, for vehicle safety. But sometimes there's a lack of coordination between the three entities that are working and other such entities, whether it's 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, you know, the right hand is talking to the left hand and all are going in the same direction?

DEFAZIO:
Administrator?

HILL:
Congresswoman, thank you for that question. One of the things that happens with the NTSB issues a recommendation -- we are required at the department level -- every month, we go through an evaluation process of how we're doing on meeting rule making deadlines and also NTSB recommendations. And so we're required to report to our deputy secretary every month on the progress we're making with those specific recommendations.

And it also requires us to coordinate with the sister agencies, so that we have to show -- if this is a recommendation, as the chairman has indicated today, that involves NHTSA and FMCSA involving motorcoach safety, we have to report on how we're coordinating and communicating with NHTSA and the milestones that we're supposed to meet in making that recommendation. So we have an internal process, 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've been working with NHTSA to better identify sources of information about bus fires. We're also working with the fire group to deal with information that they have in that arena, and we're right now analyzing 550 bus fires that have occurred over the last 10 years to better get our hands around what's going on with these tragic instances so that we can then develop policy and regulatory agendas for how we should proceed accordingly.

CAPITO:
Did you have another comment?

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're an independent agency, so we will operate by talking to the motor administrators and their agencies. We will talk to the departments. We will also talk to Congress. We'll also talk to operators. We'll also talk to manufacturers. And our record is pretty good.

Of the 12,600 recommendations we have issued in the 40 years that we've 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're proud of our record. I'd like to see that become 100 percent, and my board will be working toward that.

CAPITO:
A quick question -- has there ever been in research into airbags in motorcoaches, side bags?

ROSENKER:
There's been a good deal of research, but I don't know where the final assessment and analysis has come. We're real interested in examining what this report which was just released by NHTSA and Transport Canada says about occupant protection in motor coaches.

CAPITO:
OK. Last question -- most of the motor operators are small businesses, and, according to the data, only 1 percent of the companies in the industry operate more than 100 motorcoaches. What kind of -- do you do some -- do you have available some special training for small businesses? I mean, I think we've identified this as part of the problem, with the inabilities 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.

HILL:
Congresswoman, one of the things that happened with the Congress 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 their responsibilities 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's why we, administratively, have moved that up to nine months to get in there and visit them.

Secondly, we're taking an approach that we do have information on our web site for new entrant motor carriers, motorcoach operators. Secondly, we are visiting them, and 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're doing that, and I think what we need to do is -- as we are seeing the new entrant process change, we've issued a notice of proposed rule making to change the way we look at new entrants, to make it more stringent, and we believe that as that goes into effect, we're going to see much more oversight of those new entrants, as the chairman has indicated, on an earlier visit than we are now.

CAPITO:
All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

DEFAZIO:
I thank the gentlelady for the questions.

Ms. Fallin? Go ahead. Mr. Oberstar is thinking, as he often does, so he'll have questions soon.

FALLIN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You know, I heard you talk about, Director Hill, that you have doubled the amount of inspections on the buses, and I think it's very important for us in government to have a culture of continuous improvement in all processes that we deliver. And 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 with what the laws might not allow you to do for safety.

HILL:
Well, it, specifically, 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. And so we can't withhold the ability to issue operating authority to anyone until we've had to do entrant reviews.

So I'm not suggesting that we require every single person to show fitness beforehand. That would be something that we'd have to work with the committee on. But I do think that the motorcoach issue does require upfront evaluation much more stringently than we do with people who haul general freight.

FALLIN:
OK. And if I could do a follow-up question, Mr. Chairman -- you were asked about the airbags and if there had been any studies for safety on airbags. What about seatbelts? And I know it's a cost factor, but what have the studies shown as far as cost factor versus safety?

ROSENKER:
We've actually done some work early on in seatbelts 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've done some kinetic simulation -- kinematics simulation, and we're still not sure what the answer is.

We're looking at a systems approach, fully integrated. I don't want to give the impression that safety belts are bad. We've done very, very well with safety belts in automobiles. They've been extremely useful and extremely effective in preventing injury and fatality. 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 injury, a minor accident.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you very much. I'd like to follow up on that. So was the qualifying word in there lap belt, or 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, were they not?

ROSENKER:
I'm hesitant to tell you exactly what happened there, given the fact that we're only 18 days into that investigation, and we don't...

DEFAZIO:
All right. But do you know where the bodies were or weren't now?

ROSENKER:
In some cases, we know exactly what happened, and in others, we're still trying to analyze what happened.

DEFAZIO:
All right. Well...

ROSENKER:
I would -- if it's OK with you, Mr. Chairman, I'd prefer to talk about the recommendations we have had after studying a number of motorcoach accidents...

DEFAZIO:
OK. That'll be fine.

ROSENKER:
... that have been on the record for close to eight years, and nothing has been done. And they are in the areas, if you will, of NHTSA studying and ultimately coming up with a series of standards which talks about motorcoach occupant protection systems. The word is systems, a fully integrated system, some of which will be active, and some of which may be passive.

And 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 a roll occurs. We've got some data that we've seen through our kinematics simulations that have not always proven that a belt is the answer.

DEFAZIO:
And, again, if we could get at the bottom of it, is it because it was a lap belt, not a shoulder harness lap belt, or was it just restraining the person in the seat that caused the problem?

ROSENKER:
It could be -- I hate to be as...

(CROSSTALK)

DEFAZIO:
The issue about it -- I mean, I know the EU and Australia have gone ahead with, you know, a safety belt or a shoulder harness safety belt system, and I'm just trying to get at the root of what your -- at the margin or -- I mean, what is the concern about restraining a person in the seat?

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's the answer. They are not currently designed to be able to handle that type of stress or that type of design.

DEFAZIO:
If they were anchored to the seat.

ROSENKER:
If they were anchored in any way, shape, or form to any -- even perhaps to the floor panel...

DEFAZIO:
OK. So...

ROSENKER:
... because they're not -- the floor panel wasn't designed to hold...

DEFAZIO:
So we're where aviation was 10 years ago, where they had developed -- where they did require lap belts, but the lap belts were developed to DC-3 standards, and we were flying jets, and, therefore, the seats didn't stay anchored. And, you know, 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 use in jets.

So you're saying, basically, what you would need is to say from this day forward or promulgating future rules for new buses manufactured that either the seats and/or -- as they're 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 pre-existing buses don't meet those standards and couldn't.

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 in your automobile. It may well be an approach that could be looked at for the motorcoach.

As I say, we're 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 or that type of thing.

DEFAZIO:
OK. Thank you. That was a bad question.

Chairman Oberstar?

OBERSTAR:
Thank you very much. I'm delighted you've scheduled this hearing and are probing into the subject matter in depth. I want to thank you and Mr. Duncan for your thoughtful and carefully structured approach.

Intercity bus travel is a matter of long interest and, more than appreciation, an economic issue in my district. Greyhound started between my hometown and the neighboring community of Hibbing, Minnesota. It started bringing miners to work.

Bus Andy, George Anderson, founded the -- 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. And after a few days, Bus Andy took a torch and cut his hotmobile (ph) 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, and he started it, and 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. And in 2005, while aviation was posting some 700 million passengers in the domestic airspace, 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 carrier shall be maintained at the highest possible level. That's the basic guidepost for FAA safety, and it has served us exceedingly well.

And I thought we ought to -- if we're 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 could afford, and not just the safety the bus companies or trucking companies could afford, but the highest possible level. And the National Transportation Safety Board has been our beacon for guidance on safety matters, finding what went wrong, giving guidelines on how to fix it in the future.

And, Mr. Hill, you come from a safety background in the Indiana patrol. You understand the significance -- you and I had a good conversation about several aspects of safety, and not all of the issues that are the subject of this hearing can be laid at your doorstep, but they're instructive for you.

Mr. DeFazio just raised a question about seats, and 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, and people slide to the front and are crushed and killed. So FAA is imposing a 16-G standard.

Is there any such standard for motorcoaches? Mr. Hill? Mr. Rosenker?

HILL:
I am not familiar with such a standard for...

OBERSTAR:
Have you given any thought to such a thing? Have you looked at past accidents and seen what happens to the seats when they have a crash?

HILL:
I would be glad to confer with my people -- 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.

OBERSTAR:
I need you need some intermodalism here, and I think it would be very important to bring NHTSA into this discussion.

Chairman Rosenker?

ROSENKER:
In the United States, we have no standards specifically for the passenger seat. Overseas, in Australia, I believe they have a fairly significant G-force, yet in Europe, it is, I believe, at a 3-G factor. And as far as the safety belt is concerned in a bus, there's only one requirement, and that is for the driver. That is today.

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's 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 have a zero tolerance -- that's what aviation's goal is, a zero accident objective.

And what is even of further significance is that this hearing is being held in consideration of safety practices in FMCSA at the very time that the border is being opened to Mexican trucks. And 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, was 23 percent last year. If that's the case, and we have Mexican trucks, and we're supposed to have inspectors in Mexico and in the United States, and they're 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? And can you then further delineate between trucks and buses of that 23 percent?

HILL:
Yes, sir. 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, and the out-of-service rate for buses is fairly consistent for the vehicle part. It's about 9 percent. The 23 percent that you quoted, sir, is related specifically to the truck out-of-service rate.

Now, as far as the driver out-of-service rate, it's somewhere around 4 percent for the drivers of motorcoaches. So 9 percent versus 23 percent -- I think you're right. We shouldn't be satisfied with 9 percent. We should be looking for the zero 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'm consistent with you.

I'm going to CVSA, which is the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, next week to speak with all of our state partners, and this is one of the things that I'm 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.

OBERSTAR:
Well, the sooner that the companies understand that the FMCSA is going to be serious and tough and shut some companies down, they'll shape up, because they don't want to be out of service, and they don't want to be out of business. But they've got 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 a paperwork review.

HILL:
The question was from Chairman DeFazio about when we did the compliance review of Global Limo, why did we not find the vehicle related defects. And 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 that handle them randomly throughout the country, and so there was not an in-depth vehicle assessment at the time that that compliance review was made.

OBERSTAR:
Do you have a sufficient number of inspectors to undertake these reviews?

HILL:
Well, we have...

OBERSTAR:
How many inspectors do you have?

HILL:
We have 700 safety investigators throughout the country, and we have 13,000 -- 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.

So we -- having come from the state, I'm very much interested in making sure our agency keeps that focus in pushing the work out. For example, when I came to the agency in 2003, I was shocked that more states weren't doing compliance reviews -- somewhere around 1,000 to 1,500 a year. And I said, "Look, we've got to get more state people involved in doing compliance reviews of carriers. They've got more people than we do. They've got the expertise. They're closer to the situation. They know this."

And so we have now increased that last year up to over 5,000 compliance reviews by the state people. That's not satisfactory for me. So to answer your question, I want to see more resources dedicated to commercial motor vehicle safety, and that's one of the communications that I'm going to have with the states next week.

OBERSTAR:
That's very good and commendable, and I'll close on a note -- you go meet with those folks next week, and you tell them this committee is serious about safety, and we're serious about the partnership between the federal and state governments, and we -- I participated 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 governments in the construction of our highways and bridges and transit systems, and there should similarly be a partnership on safety.

But I'll just give you one example. In the 1980s, mid 1980s, I was chair of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee. We were looking into aviation safety, and we found major failures of maintenance in U.S. air carriers. And the FAA Flight Standards District Offices reported to the subcommittee, "We don't have enough people to do these inspections." We're looking at paperwork, not engine work. We're looking at reports. We're not hands-on on the shop floor.

As a result of that, the Congress and this committee approved an authorization for an increase of $10 million to hire at least 1,000 more FAA safety inspectors and trained them and put them out in the FSDOs, the Flight Standards District Offices. So you can't do safety if you're just looking at the paperwork and looking at the reports. You've got to be in the shops, in the offices, with the drivers, and you've got to be out on the roads.

Thank you.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Boozman?

BOOZMAN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really don't have any questions, but I've 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's very, very important, and so, again, I appreciate it. Thank you.

DEFAZIO:
I thank the gentleman.

Just to follow up on the chairman's line of questioning, Administrator Hill, I'm having a little -- the compliance review versus -- what do we call the initial review, when a new company is established? What do we call that?

HILL:
A safety audit.

DEFAZIO:
OK. So does a safety audit include a thorough inspection of all the equipment, since a compliance review doesn't?

HILL:
No, Mr. Chairman, it does not. If we...

DEFAZIO:
So how is a safety audit -- so at a safety audit, we're still not going out and physically looking at the buses there?

HILL:
Mr. Chairman, the operative word there was thorough. You said do we do a thorough inspection.

DEFAZIO:
Oh, OK.

HILL:
We do some inspections at the business, but it is not as robust as you're indicating that you'd like it to be.

DEFAZIO:
OK. But a safety audit for a new entrant does include at least going out and taking a look at the equipment?

HILL:
Well, in some cases, it does, but it's not -- it is not the normal.

DEFAZIO:
You know, that causes me an even newer and higher level of concern. So we have someone who has entered into business. They're a new entrant in -- and I appreciate the fact that you're getting to them within nine months and not 18 to look at mostly paperwork. But I just can't believe at some point -- do all states require physical inspection of buses for new entrants? Do all states require that?

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...

DEFAZIO:
Right, but the one in Texas, for instance -- Texas doesn't inspect buses?

HILL:
Well, I don't know the answer, but I'd be glad to get back with you. But several states do not require it. That is correct.

DEFAZIO:
So we have the possibility that we have a new entrant. They can operate for nine months under your current inspection regime, and under your current regulations, up to 18 months, without any review of their operations, their -- except for random safety checks on the highway. And then even when we do get someone there, we're not mandating at least an initial inspection of their equipment. That's correct, right? Does that mean -- that is correct?

HILL:
That is an accurate description, yes, Mr. Chairman.

DEFAZIO:
OK. All right. If I could just return again to the Texas incident, I'm 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. Do we know the answer to that?

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. Then there was a review done by the Texas authorities, and then after the event, the tragic event that occurred, we went back in and did a compliance review again. I would like to get back to you for the record...

DEFAZIO:
Yes, if we could nail down the chronology, the deficiencies found, when the initial compliance review was done, what deficiencies were found, what further action was taken, when Texas -- because, I mean, I'm 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, you know. He just walked -- you know, maybe sneaked across the border, and they put him in the driver's seat, and he was working for, you know -- he was at a good price for the company.

But, I mean, I'm just curious as to, like, how long he had been there. They only had six drivers. We're not talking about a big company, and if you're 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?

HILL:
Mr. Chairman...

DEFAZIO:
And that had to have been a contributory factor here.

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's something that I'll have to delineate in the chronology...

DEFAZIO:
Right. We'd also like that chronology, if we could, too.

HILL:
Yes, sir.

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?

ROSENKER:
Yes, sir, very well. Thank you.

DEFAZIO:
OK. I just wanted to make sure, you know. People always butcher mine, so I'm sensitive to that.

I want to ask you sort of to quantify -- in fact, it's a point you've made, but I just want to get at the bottom -- 65 recommendations, according to our records, since 1999 to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and only 26 have been closed, which doesn't -- you know, when you talked about your overall recommendations and statistics, historically, you had an 80-some-odd percent closure rate. In this case, by rough estimate, we're pretty far below 50 here. We're 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 the NTSB proposes frivolous things. But some of them, I guess, might be potentially expensive. Is that the problem? Could you just enumerate a little bit or elaborate a bit?

ROSENKER:
Well, sir, 36 remain open of the 65. The actual percentage rate from '67 until today, the 40 years, is about 72 percent. So we'd like to see the administrator bring that up by about 10 percent. At least, he'd be average, and, frankly, we'd like to see him even go beyond that.

DEFAZIO:
We don't think of him as an average guy. We'd like him to beat the average.

ROSENKER:
I would agree, sir. I would agree.

DEFAZIO:
All right.

ROSENKER:
But the areas that we're particularly interested in are that of dealing with the driver, that of medical issues. We've got -- we put out eight recommendations, seven of which are still open. Now, they've got a medical review board that's getting ready to work on a host of the medical issues that I believe we've suggested.

Part of the problems, 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.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you.

Mr. Hill, would you care to respond?

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're doing.

My predecessor -- when she came in, and I was her chief safety officer, we really worked hard at getting the rule making backlog improved, and medical processes are part of that. We've set up the medical review board. We're dealing with preparing right now a regulatory action to deal with the national registry so we'd have an examiner registry to make sure that the people that are doing exams are meeting standards, and then we can track to make sure that they are current in their -- they're complying with what the guidance from this committee has been.

And then the medical review board is -- and they've met three times. They're meeting again in April. They're 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 safety, about diabetes exemptions and so forth, and 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 it together.

We've issued a notice of proposed rule making for combining the medical certification with the commercial driver's license. That comment period is closed. We're now going through the comment analysis phase, and we're going to prepare then the final rule so that we can get it out. We want to get this done. We want to get this most wanted list taken care of, and I'm anxious to work with the NTSB on doing that.

And one of the things I'd 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's in place, specifically, the FAA, which is a much different set of people than dealing with 6 million drivers. And that's going to complicate the cost, it's going to complicate the oversight, so what we're 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.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you.

Mr. Dent?

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?

HILL:
Congressman Dent, one of the things talked about earlier in this hearing was the need to prioritize the bus compliance review process differently from what we've been doing. When we first got the initial setup recommendations from the hearing in Wilmer, Texas, in which the bus fire we've 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 to bring in resources." So what we're going to do between now and the end of the year is we're visiting every unrated -- that means a carrier that has never had a compliance review with us -- we're 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're doing.

And then we've increased the number of inspections from what we did last year significantly, and we're 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're 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.

DENT:
And that leads to my next question, which is that, you know, there have been reports of bus companies failing their safety inspections, and FMCSA is revoking the company's operating authority, and then within, you know, a short period of time, a few days, the bus company -- the bus resumes operation. So how is it possible, and what additional steps need to be taken to ensure that an operator that's shut down for noncompliance doesn't simply restart operations under a different company or corporate name?

HILL:
Well, this is a huge issue for us, because you're right. That's been in the past, not just with bus companies, but with truck companies that want to skirt the safety violations. So we're working -- one of the requirements in safety (OFF-MIKE) is that we're supposed to have a rule in place that will allow us to better track these carriers when they go out of business.

So we're 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're going. At this point, what we're doing is we're 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're also looking to the future to write a rule to address this.

DENT:
Thank you for that answer, and at this time, I yield back the balance of my time. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

DEFAZIO:
I thank the gentleman for his questions.

Mr. Coble?

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'm 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?

HILL:
Congressman Coble, as I was mentioning earlier in the hearing, this is...

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

HILL:
I'd be glad to answer the question...

(UNKNOWN)
I think the gentleman's question is a little different. I think he's asking if you actually do get to the point of enforcement and putting someone -- you know, basically, having them suspend operations, some of them, I believe the gentleman is saying, even though they've received that order, begin operating again, not that they've been approved to operate again, but they continue or begin to operate. Is that the gentleman's question?

COBLE:
That's it. That's...

(UNKNOWN)
I don't think that has been addressed.

HILL:
OK. 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. And so what we have done is in the last year, we have directed a series of strike force activities to address these curbside operators, and we have identified 24 of them to date. We have also been dealing with enforcement action against them.

And so we're trying to, first of all, identify who they are so that we know who the principal owners are, and then we can go in and visit 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 that we have from the earlier compliance review.

But the one thing that we haven't had in place is we have not had compliance reviews of all these carriers done. And so we've now identified these 28 (sic) 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're trying to build our database so we know exactly what is going on. And then as I indicated in the earlier question, we are now in the process of developing a rule that will allow us to take enforcement action against people that recreate themselves.

COBLE:
Well, it appears you're on top of this, and I'm encouraged to hear that.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

DEFAZIO:
I thank the gentleman for his questions.

If we can go back just to the issue, when you issue -- I mean, 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're abysmal over here in the driver ratings, if over in the other categories, they're okay, you wouldn't give them an unsatisfactory? I mean, 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?

HILL:
No, it's an internal process, and that's one of the reasons why we're looking at the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 to redo the way we do safety ratings, sir.

DEFAZIO:
So, currently, that's the case?

HILL:
Yes, that is correct.

DEFAZIO:
So someone may have a whole bunch of drivers over here that are just like the Wilmer driver, who's, you know, an illegal alien, 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?

HILL:
We would...

DEFAZIO:
Under current rules, we couldn't?

HILL:
We could take enforcement action, but we would not revoke their operating -- or give them an unsatisfactory rating.

DEFAZIO:
Boy, that does not give me much confidence. I mean, there's like two -- I think Mr. Rosenker would say there's two critical things. Could you tell us what those two critical things are?

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, 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 (OFF-MIKE), 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."

DEFAZIO:
Mr. Hill?

HILL:
May I follow, sir?

DEFAZIO:
Sure.

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.

So if they are having deficiencies, as you've outlined, in this area of driver deficiencies, that's going to show up in this inspector score, and they're 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.

DEFAZIO:
Well, I guess the question would be -- and, again, this goes back -- which you can't answer specifically -- about their rating, how they received that rating, and whether or not those items were identified and the ISS was stopping the Global Limo vehicles, because as I understand it, we didn't even -- I mean, they're switching off license plates, they've got illegal drivers, they're not doing maintenance, and, somehow, they didn't ring any alarm bells until they killed 44 people.

HILL:
The chairman is well noted on that, and I'm going to have to concede that there were some deficiencies in this...

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 -- you know, comparing what was identified, what that triggered, what follow-up, and, you know, 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 mean, I just -- I'm just appalled. I mean, there ought to be a certain level of violation in one category where you just say, "Look, you know, you've got this guy driving. He doesn't have a CDL, doesn't have a medical, doesn't speak the language, doesn't know how to drive the vehicle. We're taking the license plates back with us, and you get in touch when you straighten this stuff out, and we'll send an inspector by again."

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 Atlanta, 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.

DEFAZIO:
No, that goes to the second issue, which is of the -- you know, containing people in the vehicle and the integrity of the vehicle. I understand, and I'm not saying that your system always fails, and there are very few bad apples out there, obviously, or we would have a lot more problems.

But we've got to get the bad apples out of the barrel a little more expeditiously. That's a very simple way of putting it, but I think that's what the public would expect. I know I do.

So, anyway, do either of you have any further reflections, closing statements? Otherwise, we'll move on.

HILL:
Could I just say one thing in regard...

DEFAZIO:
Sure.

HILL:
... because I think it goes to the heart of what you're saying, Mr. Chairman. There was a program that was put in place several years ago called -- what we now call PRISM, and, basically, what this does is it comes out of actually the -- I think it was the 1991 ISTEA. And 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 got the legislative authority to revoke registration plates of motor carriers that are found to be not in compliance with safety regs. And I think that's a good thing, and if we could have more states participating in that -- we're working that very hard.

But I think that's an area where we can get to the heart of this, because if states have the authority to revoke registrations, then you don't just have somebody violating an out-of-service order. You have somebody violating registration laws, and when they don't have the plates, it's a lot easier to detect than just an out-of-service order. So just a point of order, sir.

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 can provide some follow-up information and a list on that, I'd be happy to follow up on that.

HILL:
OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

ROSENKER:
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to be before the committee today and enjoyed the opportunity to be next to my friend, Administrator Hill. He has got 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're well above average, Mr. Administrator.

DEFAZIO:
I thank you both. This is a very big job, given the volume of the vehicles, and I just know that we have to do better. So thank you both for being here today and helping contribute to ideas for improvement. I appreciate your time.

And with that, I'll dismiss this panel and call for the next panel to come forward.

OK. I thank the second panel for being here, and we'll begin. I hope I get everyone's -- well, it looks like very straightforward, although there may be a little trick here. I understand it's pronounced Crean. Is that correct?

CREAN:
Crean, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

DEFAZIO:
Crean. Either I'm not hearing well or -- I said Crean. OK. I'm going to guess that, but I was told something else, I think. But, Mr. Crean, please proceed.

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'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear today and discuss the issue of bus safety.

For the past 17 years, I've 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 operation. Because of that commitment, I've been an active member of the American Bus Association's Bus Industry Safety Council, an associate member of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, and a board member of the local chapter of the National Safety Council.

I know we're here today to discuss bus safety, and it's 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 the 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'm sure you've 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's been very much an uphill battle. When these carriers are subject to enforcement action, they simply change their name, their registration, their address and their DOT number, and continue operation with a different paint scheme and a different name.

FMCSA must immediately become aggressive in the audit 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 that nothing will be done, and that's 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, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I'm open to any questions. Thank you.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you.

Mr. Scott?

SCOTT:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman DeFazio, Mr. Duncan, members of the committee, I appreciate you 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 notable safety record and our goals for 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, and 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 of bus and motorcoach operators.

Our company was founded in 1983 by my parents, Lewis 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 sized 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 one-half million 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 4.23 employees. Seventy- five percent of the industry consists of fleets of fewer than 100 units, and, indeed, nearly one-half of the industry consists of fleets of 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 driver behavior in ways unimaginable a decade ago. Cameras monitor and record driver and passenger activities 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 and 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 will enhance the knowledge and skill of our industry's most valuable assets, which is our drivers.

UMA also works with the Bus Industry and Safety Council and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance in continuing efforts to develop and propagate safe operating practices. And 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 and 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, as represented by the United Motorcoach Association, 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 and intercity bus passengers.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Duncan, and members of the committee for your indulgence. Again, I am honored to testify before this committee and would welcome any questions.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you.

Mr. Hamilton?

HAMILTON:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Bruce Hamilton. I'm 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 services, 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'll 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 the public's security.

The first issue is and has been one of primary concern to the ATU, and that is the emergence of numerous low-cost carriers that skirt federal safety regulations and other things. And since Mr. Crean of Peter Pan has done such a good job of going into that issue, I'll 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. Under Federal Motor Carrier safety regulations, 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, and, 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 driver fatigue is to increase driver wages and benefits. Declines 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, and 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 very big concerns for the members I represent. We need the better reporting that's 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 seatbelts 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.

And 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, and 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 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, and I'd be happy to take questions.

DEFAZIO:
Thank you, Mr. Hamilton.

Ms. Gillan?

GILLAN:
Thank you very much. Good morning, Chairman DeFazio and Representative Duncan. Thank you very much for having these hearings. I'm 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 lack 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 seatbelts and advanced 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'm pleased this morning that Administrator Hill mentioned that beginning this year, FMCSA will require every state to have a bus inspection program, and that's really 20 years overdue.

FMCSA relies on its SafeStat system to identify which motor carriers present the highest risk 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're 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 carriers, 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. And, 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, looking at the compliance reviews and safety ratings for those motorcoach companies. Oregon had 23 motorcoach companies registered in the state. Of these, 12 had a satisfactory rating 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 a third were not rated.

Another important issue is that 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 motorcoach 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's certainly dealt with in my testimony, and 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 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.

DEFAZIO:
OK. Thank you. Just following up on your testimony, I find it -- so you're saying there is -- if I had a commercial driver's license, and I applied to a carrier, there is no training required on the bus that you might operate?

GILLAN:
No.

DEFAZIO:
None.

GILLAN:
And to get an endorsement to -- 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 has -- they 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.

DEFAZIO:
So what do they say? Are they working on it?

GILLAN:
I don't know. I guess I should have planted that question to find out. We're certainly anxious to find out. But, no...

DEFAZIO:
OK. Well, we will -- 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?

HAMILTON:
At Greyhound and also at Peter Pan Lines, we are very proud of the training program that we have. It's a peer training. The experienced drivers train the new applicants. It's a very extensive program and one that's...

DEFAZIO:
Do they actually drive the vehicles?

HAMILTON:
They actually drive the vehicles, yes. 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. And there's a lot of other newfangled stuff that they use these days that we didn't have when I first was brought on. But it took four weeks, first, just driving in areas that could suffer no harm, and then over the road, and also extensive training in dealing with passengers as well.

DEFAZIO:
OK. Do either Mr. Crean or Mr. Scott want to address that issue?

Yes, Mr. Scott?

SCOTT:
We have a 40-hour training class that we put all new hires through, which includes classroom and behind the wheel programs.

DEFAZIO:
All right. And we've already, I think, heard about Peter Pan, but --

CREAN:
Yes, and I'll just add to that. We do -- ours is a six to eight-week training program, and they do drive the bus before they get out there. They are with a senior instructor.

But in addition to operating the coach, there's 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're in the people business. We're 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.

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, and what I found was an interesting phenomenon 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, and 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. It's going to cause them a lot of work, and it's not a pleasant place to be."

And 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 -- like 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?

CREAN:
Yes, but consider the fact that I'm on the East Coast, and we have a large number of curbside carriers, and those curbside carriers make the news quite often as a result of accidents, operating in unsafe conditions, or so forth. So as a result of that, we see an increase in roadside inspections.

That increase in roadside inspections basically affects myself and Greyhound, who operate on those roads each and every day. And we certainly don't operate on 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're going to catch up with them is...

DEFAZIO:
Do they stop every bus when they do a roadside inspection?

CREAN:
Not every bus. It depends on what they're looking for. It'll either be...

DEFAZIO:
So if they saw a Peter Pan bus coming, they could say, "Well, you know, we know Peter Pan is a high-end operator. We're going to let them go by, and we're going to wait for one of these low- end operators to come rattling up, blowing blue smoke out of the exhaust."

CREAN:
Well, Mr. Chairman, that's 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 through the trouble to purposely avoid those inspection sites.

So when one of those individuals flips a bus or is involved in an accident, we see the publicity of increasing inspections. And what happens is I see a large number of inspections show up at our south station terminal, I'd say, to do safety checks on the very drivers who -- before they're even dispatched, their logs, license, and so forth are checked, and we're not going to allow them to operate should they not be.

So, really, we're inspecting the people who don't need the inspecting. We need to go deeper into the trenches and start looking at these (OFF-MIKE) carriers.

DEFAZIO:
So we need a little better intel on the part of where they're targeting their inspections, like really trying to track down some of these curbside folks and catch them as they're beginning a route, before they can disperse, and maybe some -- are they using like CBs or something to communicate with each other to find out where the inspections are at so they can avoid them, you know -- keep changing routes and 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's really unlikely we'll get inspected."

CREAN:
Most of the inspections are usually in the same places. We have (OFF-MIKE) that do destination inspections, such as at amusement parks and so forth. That's where you're 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. 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're going to know whether that company has a safety program or not, first of all, by introducing you to a safety person. Companies that you walk into that don't have no driver files, no drug and alcohol program -- it's pretty obvious and the painting is on the wall that there are no safety standards. That place just simply operates for profit and profit only.

DEFAZIO:
Now, you said one other thing that caught my attention -- SafeStat. You said maybe SafeStat can identify people, but there's no follow up or enforcement once we've identified these problem people.

CREAN:
Yes. If you go online to the SafeStat site, you can see various curbside carriers who have been inspected, whose safety rating is -- whose rating is extremely high, 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 really taken, and there's 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's good all around business.

But for other companies, it's more just seen as a cost of doing business. That shouldn't be how safety should be looked at. We're dealing with the innocent lives of thousands of people each and every day we travel on the highway, and, quite honestly, some of these carriers really don't care.

DEFAZIO:
Ms. Gillan, you talked about receiving a satisfactory rating if only 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're trying to get at here?

GILLAN:
Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's 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, you know, 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's nothing in there indicating that your safety management systems and procedures are adequate?

DEFAZIO:
All right.

Mr. Duncan?

DUNCAN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You know, in all these areas, what we need is balance and common sense, and 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. And in any industry that is very highly regulated, first, the little guys go out of business, 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's 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 could 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's no small coal companies.

And, you know, I'm wondering, Mr. Crean, do you believe that there are not enough safety regulations, that FMCSA should institute more safety regulations?

CREAN:
No, sir. There are safety regulations. They just need to start enforcing the regulations. The only clause I'll put to that is there needs to be some bite in it. There is no reason to comply if there is no consequence, and for some of these...

DUNCAN:
I'm curious as to what -- how much does it cost your company to comply with the ADA regulations? Do you have any idea?

CREAN:
Well, it's an additional cost on our vehicle of about $30,000 to $35,000 to have that bus equipped with a lift. In addition to that, there's additional training for the driver. It costs us about $8,000 to train a driver, and we hire anywhere from 20 to 30 drivers per year, and we buy about 10 to 15 buses per year.

DUNCAN:
Mr. Scott, besides the regulations, are there other pressures on your company to have safe buses and safe drivers?

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, and I believe that FMCSA needs more resources to be able to do that. And I also agree that destination inspections is a great way to inspect buses, because Disney World is a good -- for instance, me being located in Florida -- you can go there on any given day and probably see 100 buses there. So, you know, they know where they go, and that's the best place to get them.

But the biggest pressure, I would say, on our business is our own success, to continue to succeed, and we have been in business since 1983. And I know Peter Pan Bus Lines and Greyhound as well have, you know, long distinguished histories, and you don't get that way by doing things unsafe, whether 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, trained drivers, uniformed drivers, clean equipment, and on-time service. So, really, it's 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.

DUNCAN:
Well, I'll tell you -- I'll add to that. You know, I'm very pro business, but unlike some of them (OFF-MIKE), I'm pro trial lawyers to a certain extent, too, because I can tell you that that's a tremendous pressure, our incentive to operate a safe company, I would say. You certainly don't want to be sued, do you?

SCOTT:
No, not at all, and we, obviously, carry the highest levels of financial responsibility of anybody on the road.

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, and would you give us some idea, roughly, of what we're talking about?

SCOTT:
Prior to 9-11, I was paying $3,800 per bus annually for $5 million worth of coverage. Today, I'm paying close to $10,000.

DUNCAN:
$10,000 per bus?

SCOTT:
Right, that's correct.

DUNCAN:
So it's just about tripled.

SCOTT:
Pretty close to it, yes, pretty close to it. 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.

DUNCAN:
And it's gone up that much in years of relatively low inflation. We've 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 seatbelts would make motorcoaches safer. Would you go into that in a little -- would you explain to me why you say that?

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 seatbelts 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, and the margin of error for failure on the side of improving motorcoach safety with an untested technology is greater than the margin for improvement.

And I can say that this industry -- if there is a technology out there that is proven and tested to save one life, this is an industry that will get behind it. There's no question about that. Our future and our lives are built on that. But, like I said, when we have an average of 10 fatalities a year -- which, you know, one is too many -- we'd better make sure that it works, to make sure that we are truly adding to the safety and not detracting from it.

DUNCAN:
Who are these curbside operators, Mr. Hamilton, or any of you? Are they immigrants, legal or illegal, or --

HAMILTON:
There's all sorts of curbside operators. In the Northeast, primarily, they started out running service from Chinatown to Chinatown and New York and Boston, New York and Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C. And I think that there's been a lot of investigation about who they are. They're obviously very, very well funded. It's believed...

DUNCAN:
The chairman said organized crime is involved. Is that -- do you think that's --

HAMILTON:
That's the common belief, yes. I mean, I certainly can't prove that, but they're obviously very well heeled.

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?

HAMILTON:
Yes, we -- well, for one thing, we negotiate with Greyhound. The rules that we've negotiated with them exceed the federal standards in hours of service and -- well, I'm not sure how many other areas. But we also -- the union exists to make sure that our drivers are protected, and so we hold the company to a very, very high standard.

DUNCAN:
Ms. Gillan, do you agree with the chairman of the NTSB when he said this is, he thinks, the safest form of transportation?

GILLAN:
Is motorcoach? I think that motorcoach transportation is safe, however, FMCSA's jurisdiction is over all passenger carriers. And so while I think that the statistics and data on motorcoach transportation look good, that's not always the case for some of the smaller buses and 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. And 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.

DUNCAN:
Well, I'll 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've got this myth going on medical malpractice. I read where medical malpractice -- the number of -- 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 they're using -- you know, 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's just totally ridiculous, really.

But, at any rate, Mr. Chairman, that's all I have. Thank you for calling this hearing.

DEFAZIO:
Well, 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 I said, "Well" -- and then they talked about how much their general liability had gone up. It had gone up 400 percent. And 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 their -- and so I asked them -- and this is where I'm going to ask the gentleman from Tennessee -- if they would advocate for my bill to take away the anti-trust exemption, which the insurance industry enjoys -- and I have a bill that I'll 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, you know, if you write lower bus insurance, you might take some of my business. How about we both just keep -- you know, we'll keep our clients, and you keep yours, but let's jack it up 50 percent." "OK. What a deal." They can do that.

I mean, just in -- just the (OFF-MIKE) of the question -- I mean, to the major -- to the two operators -- I mean, are you -- have they given you any rationale about, you know, "Boy, there's been some huge settlements here. You won't believe our losses in the line of bus insurance, and that's why it's gone up 300 percent?" Have you heard from your carriers along those lines or --

SCOTT:
I think what you find in bus insurance these days is that it is true that judgments have gone up, and 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've seen that expand to include that first million dollars as the working layer, and now you're seeing in some cases that it is going beyond that.

So, I mean, 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 their money somewhere, and if they're not making it in the market -- bus insurance is an attractive industry for insurance companies that don't understand the bus market, because there's large dollars in premium 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, and that's 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, you know, fluctuations in insurance dollars. But since 9-11, it's -- it went up dramatically, and then it -- it seems to have leveled off. I haven't seen any increase that's significant here in the last two years. It does seem to have leveled off.

DEFAZIO:
Now, one of -- 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's the place to get them? Maybe it was you, Mr. Scott, who talked about that.

SCOTT:
Well, just to use the example of Florida, if a bus is coming to Orlando, you can bet it's going to be going to one of the theme parks at some point in time, you know. You've got Disney World, Universal Studios, MGM Studios -- you've got all these theme parks there. That is the best place to do them.

I mean, a roadside inspection, where you're 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 often, is going to be sitting there for a good few hours. That's the best time to do it. And if there is a situation where the bus is going to be put out of service, there's an opportunity to replace it, whereby the passengers are not inconvenienced.

DEFAZIO:
That's an excellent suggestion. Mr. Hill is no longer here, but perhaps (OFF-MIKE) -- perhaps they need to just, you know, circulate some of their folks down into Chinatown or wherever and find out where the buses are headed, and then say, "Hey, they're headed to Charles (ph) Street in Boston. Why don't you meet them there at 6 o'clock?"

I mean, I think that's a -- it 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 we need to be a little more nimble, I guess, and that's an excellent suggestion.

I want to thank the panel. I think you've raised a number of issues here that need to be addressed, and this committee will continue to be persistent in this area. Thanks very much for your testimony. We appreciate your time.

CQ Transcriptions, March 20, 2007 with permission.

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