The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has a new weapon in the fight against unsafe bus carriers that place passenger lives at risk of personal injury and wrongful death.The agency is planning to unveil a smartphone application that will allow passengers to determine the safety of a bus carrier before they buy a ticket for a trip. This type of transparency is essential for eliminating the “bad” bus carriers who cause most of the bus accidents. However, passengers should be warned that the information about their past records may be limited to due the limited nature of the enforcement personnel available to police the industry.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will likely unveil the new application in the month of November.The announcement of the app was made on September 23 at a bus safety Summit in Washington DC.The summit, the Motor Coach Safety Summit looked at ways that the federal agency can help reduce the operation of unsafe carriers on our highways. The Motor Coach Safety Summit also considered new hours of service requirements for drivers of passenger buses. All of these changes are welcomed by bus accident lawyers, although they have been a long time in coming.
The app will allow a passenger to check the safety record of a particular bus carrier, before buying a ticket.This allows the passenger to access valuable information about the safety of the carrier.The app won’t just give passengers information about the safety of a bus carrier, but will also allow them to submit safety violations to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s National Consumer Compliant Database.
The Motor Coach Safety Summit looked at ways to enhance training programs for drivers, in order to reduce the risk of accidents.One particular bus safety issue that has vexed Atlanta bus accident lawyers has to do with bus driver fatigue.Commercial driver fatigue concerns tend to revolve around truck drivers, but the fact is that several recent accidents have been caused by bus drivers sleeping at the wheel.One accident in 2008 in California occurred when the bus driver dozed off at the wheel, causing the bus to fall into a ditch.Eight people were killed in that accident.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is also using other technological aids to reach out to passengers.The agency has developed a bus safety checklist, which has been posted on its website.Passengers can access this checklist before they buy a ticket, and make sure that the carrier has no major violations to its credit before they begin the journey.
Too often, Atlanta bus accident lawyers find that victims of accidents are unaware of the shady safety record of the bus carrier.Loopholes in the system allow unsafe bus carriers with violations to their credit to continue operating under a new name and address.It shouldn’t be so easy for a bus company to assume a new identity, and resume operations as before.Unfortunately, it often is so.In fact, many bus accidents are caused by unsafe carriers that are operating under a new identity.The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration needs to get tougher about discouraging rogue bus companies from continuing operations under new identities.
The Atlanta bus accident attorneys at the Katz Personal Injury Lawyers represent persons injured in bus accidents across the metro Atlanta region and Georgia.