US DOT Conducts Over 3000 Surprise Passenger Carrier Safety Inspections

Benjamin Smith
Principal Technical Analyst

The US Department of Transportation (US DOT) announced on May 27 that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and its local and state law enforcement agencies conducted over 3000 surprise passenger bus inspections during a two-week period in May. These inspections resulted in 442 out-of-service citations for 127 drivers and 315 passenger transport vehicles. Additionally, the FMCSA and state safety inspectors launched 38 full safety compliance reviews of commercial passenger bus companies.

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said, “During this heavy summer travel season, we will remain alert and remove from our roads any passenger bus or driver that places motorists at risk.” According to the US DOT, over the last five years, the number of unannounced commercial passenger bus roadside safety inspections and carrier compliance reviews has doubled. To learn more about this, read the US DOT news release. 

In an effort to reduce all commercial motor vehicle crashes, the FMCSA has developed a new safety program called Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA). CSA includes a Safety Measurement System (SMS), which uses crash data and inspection results to identify unsafe motor carrier companies, including passenger carriers. The SMS system evaluates seven different safety performance categories, or BASICs (Behavior Analysis Safety Improvement Categories). These are: Unsafe Driving, Fatigued Driving (Hours-of-Service), Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Vehicle Maintenance, Cargo-Related, and Crash Indicator.

The US DOT estimates that passenger carriers or buses transport 750 million people each year in the US. The most recent statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) show that there were 221 bus-involved fatality crashes in 2009. The number of bus-involved fatality crashes has dropped steadily since 2006, when there were 305 fatality crashes.

Photo Enforcement Helping Bring Red Light Runners to a Stop

Kelly Messerschmidt
Technical Communications Manager

Because police can’t be everywhere at once, red light cameras are being used more and more to enforce motorists’ coming to a stop at red lights. In fact, studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and others have found a 40-96% reduction in the number of people running red lights at intersections using this type of photo enforcement. Watch a YouTube video about red light cameras. 

The IIHS reports that in 2009, crashes caused by red light runners resulted in 676 deaths and an estimated 130,000 injuries. Obviously, enforcing drivers’ stopping at red lights has great ramifications for public safety.

You might be surprised at just how common red light runners are. In a AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety telephone survey conducted in 2010, one-third of the drivers reported having run a red light in the past 30 days—even though 93% of them said they thought doing so was unacceptable if stopping safely was an option. Other studies cited by the IIHS report that about three drivers per hour run red lights at intersections lacking the red light cameras.
See how your state’s automatic enforcement laws measure up.

Contrary to what some think, red light cameras do not actually take a photo of every car driving through a particular intersection. Instead, the camera automatically photographs any car whose driver runs the red light. Red light cameras have been used for decades and have proven to be extremely accurate and reliable.

What constitutes one’s running a red light? It’s pretty simple. Running a red light is defined as the driver entering the intersection after the light has turned red. However, those who inadvertently find themselves in an intersection when the light changes to red are not considered red light runners. Who are the most likely to run a red light? An IIHS study conducted in 2009 found that red light runners were more likely to be younger (under 30), male, and have poor driving records with incidents of prior crashes, alcohol-related driving convictions, and speeding and other moving violations.

Read Q&As from IIHS about red light cameras. 

Tuscaloosa and Montgomery, AL DPS Field-testing eWeight, Aiding Efficiency of Weight Crews

Kelly Messerschmidt
Technical Communications Manager 

Placing limits on how heavy a load a trucker can legally carry is a frequently debated issue. Facing pressure to move larger loads, some trucking operations view fines for weight limit violations as part of the price of doing business, and they haul heavier loads than they are permitted to.

Illegal overloads create serious problems for truck stopping distances, overall highway safety and the integrity of road pavements, and they also maximize demands on truck weight enforcement units. Without enforcement, law-abiding trucking companies face a competitive disadvantage when they comply with the law and others don't.

According to the Alabama Department of Public Safety (DPS), Motor Carrier Safety Unit weight crews in Tuscaloosa and Montgomery are currently field-testing eWeight, an electronic/paperless system for filing weight reports. EWeight will improve the efficiency of the DPS Motor Carrier Safety Unit by eliminating the many hours needed to manually input data from the 4000-6000 paper forms processed each month. In addition, the electronic system will help truckers by decreasing the amount of time spent at weigh stations and giving them more on-duty hours available to move freight.

EWeight automatically calculates axle weight, and the statistical information it generates will improve the efficiency of weight crews. The eWeight system follows other electronic systems such as eCite and eCrash, which were developed for the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center (ACJIC)’s Alabama Dashboards for Visualization, Analysis and Coordinated Enforcement (ADVANCE) program, by The University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS). Learn more about ADVANCE. Read an article about the Alabama initiative in the May 5, 2011 edition of The Blue Light. 

National Work Zone Awareness Week: April 4-8, 2011

Bill Messerschmidt
Manager, MSC 

This week, April 4-8, is National Work Zone Awareness Week. This event is sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) each year for the purpose of increasing drivers' awareness of the dangers associated with highway work zones.

The theme of this year's event, "Whose Life is on the Line?" references the fact that almost 80% of the individuals killed in work zone crashes are motorists - not highway workers.

In 2009, there were 667 people killed in highway work zones and maintenance zones. This is a substantial decline since 2000, when 1,026 people were killed. To help keep these numbers on the decline, the National Work Zone Information Clearinghouse has created a comprehensive website with links to training, safety equipment, statistics, and regulations. The site is a valuable resource for contractors, workers, supervisors, and traffic planners.

The FHWA’s website contains a great deal of useful information on work zone safety, including tools for work zone management, process review, and performance metrics.

Good News: Traffic Fatalities in 2010 Fell to Lowest Levels in Reported History

Kelly Messerschmidt
Technical Communications Manager

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Friday that despite the fact that American drivers drove significantly more miles during 2010, the number and rate of traffic fatalities in 2010 fell to their lowest levels in recorded history.

Factors that may have contributed to the reductions include:

• Department of Transportation (DOT) safety programs and public safety campaigns, including their website, distraction.gov, and national summits on distracted driving,
• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) push for swift, voluntary reporting of safety defects by automakers,
• NHTSA's encouraging the development and use of crash prevention technologies, such as electronic stability control and lane-departure warning systems,
• The DOT's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) encouraging the use of Safety Edge technology and promoting the use of cable median barriers and rumble strips to reduce the number of crossover head-on collisions.