Police and transportation officials on Wednesday continued to investigate the Monday night crash on the New Jersey Turnpike of a bus bound for Philadelphia from New York's Chinatown. The driver and a passenger were killed and most of the 41 other passengers were injured when the bus, operated by Super Luxury Tours of Wilkes-Barre, struck a concrete overpass support south of Exit 9 near East Brunswick, N.J.
It was the second fatal bus wreck in three days. Early Saturday, a bus owned by another company was returning to New York's Chinatown from the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut when it crashed in the Bronx, killing 15.
The proliferation of cheap charter-bus services and an increase in bus-crash fatalities led the U.S. Transportation Department in November 2009 to propose sweeping changes in rules governing driver regulation, manufacturing standards, and safety equipment in an industry where about 3,900 companies operate about 34,000 buses. About 65 percent of the 750 million annual passengers are students and senior citizens, according to federal data.
The changes were designed to "address the most frequent causes of crashes and . . . fatalities and injuries," the department said in its Motor coach Safety Action Plan in 2009.
The National Transportation Safety Board identified driver-related problems such as fatigue, medical condition, and inattention as the major root causes of 56 percent of bus crashes investigated between 1998 and 2008.
One rule was instituted quickly: Texting by commercial bus and truck drivers was prohibited effective January 2010.
But other proposals, including mandatory seat belts and a limit on the use of cell phones and other electronic devices, still are working their way through the federal rule-making process, said Duane DeBruyne, a spokesman for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
