A tour bus carrying Asian tourists headed to Flushing, New York rear-ended a flatbed tractor trailer truck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on Monday, killing the bus driver, Mr. Bo Hua Tan, and injuring 24 passengers. The bus crash happened at about 7:30 a.m. and shut down the turnpike for five hours.
The tour bus was registered to Mr. Ho Charter Service of Bethlehem, PA. A man who answered the phone for that company identified himself as Edward Ho and said the bus was carrying two drivers, who alternated during the trip from Kentucky to New York City. One driver was unhurt, Ho said.
Here’s where the story is maddenly similar to the Sky Bus Express crash in Virginia last week. Federa safety records show that Mr. Ho Charter Service was over the acceptable limit for drivers who are cited for fatigued driving wiht a 68.9 percent score. Anything over 50 percent is over the limit.
A series of bus crashes have made the news in the past few months. Most recently, a Sky Express bus driven by Kin Yiu Cheung crashed in Virginia, killing four and injuring over 50 people. Sky Express, owned by Jimmy Chung, was also cited by Federal authorities for violating fatigued driver regulations.
So what is the solution? More regulations? We have regulations in place and they are apparently not being enforced until after a fatal crash. How about beefing up enforcement of the regulations? Let’s start with allowing law enforcement to perform random safety inspections of buses, just as they are allowed to require tractor trailer trucks to pass through random inspection sites.
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