Utah Bus Rollover Accident: Officials Questioned Lack of Adequate Federal Safety Standards
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials have concluded that driver fatigue and lack of federal safety standards protecting bus passengers contributed to the fatalities and catastrophic injuries in the January 2008 Utah bus rollover accident. These findings assume even more significance after this week's Soledad California bus crash, which killed five and injured dozens. The fatal Utah bus accident, which was the subject of this NTSB study, occurred when an Arrow Stage Lines chartered bus taking skiers home to Arizona from Utah ran off a winding road and rolled down an embankment. The impact split open the bus' roof and threw some passengers 100 yards. Nine were killed and 43 were injured. In the recent Central California bus crash, the bus split in half and passengers were thrown from an overpass to the freeway below.
The NTSB's findings, in my opinion, warrant immediate response. I join my friends at the American Association for Justice (AAJ) in their call to transportation regulators to review pending pre-Obama administration regulations and open new rulemaking proceedings to enhance commercial transportation safety measures for both big rigs and buses. These pending safety regulations include on-board electronic recorders to monitor a driver's hours of operation and prevent fatigue, seatbelts, stronger roofs and windows. The NTSB has been calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to enact these regulations for nearly a decade.
There is no question that when federal agencies drag their feet with safety regulations, people lose their lives and suffer grave personal injuries. Public safety is in jeopardy. The Obama administration must make it a priority to update these transportation safety standards. Bus rollover ollover accident attorneys, consumer safety advocates and the AAJ have also been calling on the NHTSA to update their roof strength standard. Weak roofs in cars, trucks and SUVs contribute to nearly 10,000 rollover accident deaths in the United States each year.
It is not only commercial buses, but also commercial trucks that pose a serious danger when it comes to driver fatigue. According to a March 2009 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 3.9 million of the nation’s 14 million commercial vehicle drivers could be affected by sleep apnea, a leading cause of driver fatigue, which causes numerous rollover accidents each year on our highways. The transportation industry has no incentive to fix this problem because they are more worried about their profits and bottom line. If the NHTSA and the federal government continue to drop the ball on these safety standards, we are going to see more catastrophic accidents and loss of precious lives.
