A few days ago,  Arizona Republic reporter Robert Anglen called me out of the blue to talk about the lack of seat belts in buses, following a crash in Utah that killed nine passengers. Here’s what he wrote about our conversation:

Georgia lawyer Ken Shigley, who specializes in bus and truck accidents, says that approach is tantamount to the industry saying, "Mama didn’t make me."

After the tour-bus accident in Florida on Jan. 2, Shigley wrote on his firm’s Web site that the crash once again illustrated a need for seat belts on buses.

Passengers described breaking windows and being scattered from their seats after a car rammed the tour bus and the driver lost control on a highway. The bus tore through a guardrail, veered across the road and slammed into a wall.

"If the manufacturers spent as much on safety as they do on lobbyists, a lot of lives could be saved," he says.

Shigley represents survivors of a tour bus crash in Atlanta last year that killed six and injured 29 members of an Ohio university baseball team.

Shigley says if seat belts and safety glass had been installed in the bus, the outcome would have been significantly different. As it stands now, Shigley says, accidents keep happening, and the bus industry keeps blaming the government for failing to enact standards.

"If they (bus industry) embraced it and helped it happen, it would happen," he says.

The same article appears at Fox11AZ.com.

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Standards in the U.S. do not require buses to have either seat belts (except for the driver) or laminated glass in side windows that would prevent passenger ejection. If the manufacturers spent as much on safety as they do on lobbyists, a lot of lives could be saved. Almost anywhere else in the world, the same buses would have seat belts for all passengers.

Two recent  crashes of buses transporting Hispanic immigrant passengers highlight problems in safety of charter and tour buses, particularly those providing low-priced transportation for that market segment.

Investigation of a recent Capricorn Bus Lines crash in Victoria, Texas, revealed that  the company has been cited 19 times in the past three years for issues ranging from incomplete driver log books to cracked windshields and tire tread separation, and settled a lawsuit two years ago with victims in a similar wreck in Mexico for $3.3 million. The driver in the Victoria crash was tested for alcohol and drugs, but driver fatigue is apparently the prime focus of the NTSB investigation. One passenger was killed and another had an arm amputated.

Meanwhile, investigation of an Arkansas crash of a charter bus bound from Chicago to Houton has revealed that the driver had amphetamines in his system, impairing his ability to safely operate the bus, prosecutors said Thursday.  The Tornado Bus Co. vehicle carrying 46 passengers and crossed a median from the westbound lanes of Interstate 40 and collided with a pickup truck in the eastbound lanes. An oncoming semitrailer truck then collided with the bus. The dead included the driver of the pickup and three bus passengers. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, Tapia was ticketed for speeding in April 2005. The agency’s records, which only include the last three years, did not specify whether he was cited while driving a Tornado bus.

Whatever opinions one may hold regarding immigration policies, safety of buses operating on our highways must not be compromised.  Unfortunately, safety enforcement has been lax, costing lives of both passengers on such buses and others on the highways.

A Greyhound bus and a tractor-trailer collided Wednesday near Henderson, NC.  The bus plunged down an embankment and overturned, injuring at least 29 people.  The bus was traveling from Richmond, Va., to Raleigh on U.S. 1 when it collided with the tractor-trailer as a tractor-trailer ahead of it made a turn and the bus failed to slow down.  The bus ran off the shoulder and down an embankment before it overturned.   

The Bluffton University baseball team bus crash last March in Atlanta has led to the introduction of bipartisan legislation in Congress to tighten motor coach safety rules.  Introduced by  U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R., Texas), the proposed  the Motorcoach Enhanced Safety Act of 2007 would require:

• Safety belts and stronger seating systems to ensure occupants stay in their seats in a crash.

• Anti-ejection glazing to prevent passengers from being easily thrown outside the motorcoach.

• Strong, crush-resistant roofs that can withstand rollovers.

• Improved protection against fires by reducing flammability of the motor-coach interior.

• Better training for operators in the case of fire.

• Improved commercial driver training. Currently, no training is required by federal regulation.

• Strengthened motor-coach vehicle safety inspections including roadside inspections, safety audits, and state and motor carrier programs for identifying vehicle defects.

• Electronic On-Board Recorders with real-time capabilities to track precise vehicle location, and recorded data not accessible to manipulation by a driver or motor carrier.

We are representing several of the Bluffton team members in cooperation with other lawyers in several states.

In yet another crash that highlights the lack of inadequacy of bus safety standards, two people were killed and two critically injured Saturday evening after a small charter bus hit a median wall and utility poles on I-85 southbound between the Monroe Drive and Buford Highway exits.  Two occupants were thrown from the bus into the northbound HOV lane.  The bus was operated by Greene Classic Limousines, which has a fleet of 46 vehicles.

Reportedly the there was a mechanical failure in the steering of the bus. News reports have not identified the make or model of the bus or why the occupants were ejected. However, this is the second bus crash on Atlanta freeways this year.  The crash on March 2 of a chartered tour bus carrying the Bluffton University baseball team focused attention on peculiar road design and omitted signs,  as well as the lack of seat belts and safety glass in buses in the United States.  (I represent several of the Bluffton players.) 

It is unlikely that any passengers on the Bluffton bus would have been ejected and killed if there had been passenger seat belts and safety glass in side windows, as are required in Europe and Australia.  If the same bus were purchased in virtually any country other than the US, it would have been so equipped.  In that case, a web search located an identical bus for sale in Turkey 3-point seat belts at all passenger positions, but due to federal regulations that give license to unsafe design, passenger seat belts are not standard equipment on buses in the US.  Recently I learned, however, that some tour bus companies have retrofitted full size motor coaches with seat belts for as little as $900 per bus. 

There is no legitimate safety reason for omitting from buses the seat belts and safety glass that would prevent passenger ejection. Similar bus wrecks in other countries, where buses have such safety equipment, have resulted in all passengers emerging with no serious injuries. About the only substantive defense for bus manufacturers in these cases is the preemption defense, by which their lobbying of federal agencies may shield them from accountability to the families of those who are injured and killed.  The federal regulations on bus safety are silent on these points, so lawyers in a pending case in Texas have what should be a good argument against preemption. 

A charter bus carrying members of a  baseball team from Bluffton University, a Mennonite college in Ohio, crashed onto I-75 from an overpass at Northside Drive about 5:30 AM Friday morning, killing six people and closing the southbound lanes of the interstate for 5 hours. A witness who was driving alongside the bus said it exited on a ramp at about 60 MPHThe bus hit the bridge’s 2-foot-high retaining wall and crashed through a 10-foot-high fence atop the wall and plunged back to I-75 below. 

The unusual design of the HOV lane left exit is attracting a lot of attention in the local media.  I have driven by that exit and others like it many times and wondered when it would produce a tragedy.  While the state folks are quoted in the media insisting that everything complied with federal design standards, the signage for that counterintuitive exit seems questionable.

I have two children close to the age of these college students.  It is difficult to contemplate the enormity of the loss these parents face.  They will be able to lean on their faith, but it still must be enormously painful.  I am reminded of a case we handled several years ago involving the crash of a college cheerleader van, and a crash involving a Taylor University van last year. I have often recommended to clients who have lost young adult children Lament for a Son, a book by a theology professor Nicholas Wolterstorff whose own son died in a mountain climbing accident at age 21.

Interstate charter buses are governed by Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.  The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, so it is likely any violations will be uncovered.  The Georgia State Tort Claims Act allows for negligent design claims against the DOT if road design failed to comply with standards when built.  But that’s a subject for another day.

Last September in Texas, a bus carrying nursing home residents escaping from Hurricane Rita caught fire and burned, killing 23 passengers.  On August 8 -9 in Washington, sparked into action by this tragedy, the National Transportation Safety Board will hold a public hearing on bus safety.  During the hearing, accident investigators will reveal the first details of their nearly yearlong investigation into how flames from the bus’s right rear wheel spread to the passenger cabin, causing medical oxygen bottles to burst and killing more than half the patients onboard, many of them unable to walk. In addition to focusing on the fire’s cause, board members will discuss transporting people with special needs, bus evacuations, fire detection and suppression, and government oversight of bus companies and tour brokers. Investigators have said that poorly maintained wheel bearings led to a heat buildup that started the fire. Photographs from the scene showed that the bearings were so worn that some had fused together and others had broken off. The photos also appeared to show that some oxygen bottles used by patients were stored haphazardly.

Much as the Winecoff Hotel fire in Atlanta in 1946 led to nationwide improvement in fire safety regulations in hotels, perhaps this bus fire will lead to improved bus safety standards.