The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) wants tighter controls on Hours-of-Service compliance, after investigating a crash between a semi-truck and party bus that caused three deaths and numerous injuries.
The crash occurred Dec. 16, 2022 in Williamsburg, Va. The semi piled into the rear of a slower-moving bus on I-64. The bus was traveling 20-25 mph in the right land while the truck was traveling 65-70 mph with cruise engaged.
The truck driver didn’t brake or take evasive action as it approached the bus. The NTSB says its investigation concluded the truck driver was fatigued and that its carrier, Triton Logistics (not related to Canada-based Triton Transport), created false logs using its electronic logging device (ELD).
As a result, the NTSB issued six new recommendations and reiterated three previous ones.
New recommendations include:
- The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration should strengthen ELD requirements to prevent opportunities for the creation of fake driver accounts.
- The Commonwealth of Virginia should offer management safety guidance to new intrastate motor carrier licensees covering licence class, drug and alcohol testing, fatigue management, vehicle maintenance, and safe commercial vehicle operation.
- Triton Logistics should implement a process to regularly verify the accuracy of drivers’ records of duty, implement a robust fatigue management program, and proactively use onboard inward- and forward-facing video event recording to improve driver training.
- The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance should use this crash to educate its members on the importance of safeguarding the electronic logging device system to prevent falsification of information.
Reiterated recommendations include:
- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should complete the development and application of performance standards for the assessment of forward collision avoidance systems in commercial vehicles. NHTSA should also require that all buses and trucks over 10,000 lb. be equipped with onboard video recorders that record parametric data associated with an event.
- The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration should provide guidance to motor carriers on the use of onboard video recordings to ensure driver compliance with regulations and safe operations.
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