Two senators are calling out the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration following a report that the agency undercounted the number of bus and large truck crashes.
Last week, Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Edward Markey, D-Mass., sent a letter to FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs requesting information on the agency’s tracking of large truck and bus crashes.
The request follows an investigative report from ProPublica and WBUR that crash data is not being recorded accurately. The report focused mainly on bus crash data.
“According to the most recent data available, nearly 5,000 people were killed in crashes involving large trucks and buses in 2024,” the senators wrote. “FMCSA uses information from these crashes to identify specific truck and bus companies for targeted enforcement, which can range from a warning letter to being placed out-of-service. On June 8, ProPublica and WBUR reported their investigation found that FMCSA is missing critical crash data for a company that operates school buses, making it impossible for the agency to accurately identify and target high-risk motor carriers like these.”
The senators also questioned a decrease in enforcement actions. According to the letter, FMCSA completed 1,400 enforcement cases in 2025, which was 65% fewer than the 4,000 completed in 2024.
Cantwell and Markey asked that FMCSA provide multiple documents, including those that show how the agency verifies the accuracy and completeness of state law enforcement records of motor carrier crashes, by Aug. 12.
FMCSA didn’t immediately respond to Land Line’s request for a comment on the letter. LL
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