The National Transportation Safety Board’s chairman, Mark V. Rosenker, noted that the NTSB has made more than 60 safety recommendations to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration over the past 8 years, but only 26 have been adopted by the FMCMSA. According to Rosenker, “there is outrage when a couple of hundred people are killed in aviation fatal accidents, yet you don’t seem to see, share, or demonstrate the same outrage when 4,300 people die on our nation’s highways annually.”
One can only wonder why the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration would ignore recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board. Why isn’t the FMCSA interested in decreasing injury and death caused by bus and large truck accidents. Maybe it’s the fact that the Busch administration appoints former lobbyists, executives, or lawyers of the trucking industry to head and staff the agency charged with enforcing the safety of the same industries. These former trucking industry lobbyists, executives and lawyers are not interested in reducing crashes, injuries and fatalities involving large trucks, even though this is what they are charged with, they are more interested in bowing to the interests of the trucking industry for higher profits at the expense of safety.
