Continued improvement announced for bus and truck safety

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently announced that it has continued to improve its bus and truck safety; for in 2014, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx urged the Safety Council of the Department to supervise an independent review concerning the bus and large truck safety programs at the FMCSA.

This recommendation was made in light of four commercial vehicle crashes, all of which were investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

After the inspection, the NTSB made several recommendations to improve the safety programs at FMCSA, which has successfully implemented several of these recommendations. Now the FMCSA trains all of its safety investigators with Enhanced Investigative Techniques (EIT), which guarantees that the inspectors focus on the beginning cause of all safety violations. It has also improved its high quality data usage in order to offer a clearer definition of “high risk” for FMCSA carriers. The company has also considered opportunities for enhancing commercial vehicle safety with a “Beyond Compliance” program. It has also become more intentional about joining its state partners in information sharing and modernizing IT platforms.

“At the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), we embrace good ideas that translate into safety improvements,” the announcement said. “We are always striving to protect the motoring public by removing unsafe commercial vehicles and drivers from our highways and roads.”