What areas of transportation may bus may bus safety expert witnesses consult on? These experts may report and testify on bus accidents, motor carriers, D.O.T. compliance, and more. In the news, eighteen people were hospitalized when a passenger car struck a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus on August 12. An MBTA spokesman said the driver of the car turned into the bus and may have been under the influence of drugs.
On its website, the MBTA offers safety instructions created through a partnership with the MBTA, the American Red Cross of Massachusetts Bay, the Federal Transit Administration, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently proposed a new federal motor vehicle safety standard to protect motorcoach and other large bus passengers in rollover crashes.The proposal aims to improve the structural design of large buses to ensure that passengers are better protected in a deadly vehicle rollover by ensuring that the space around them remains sufficiently intact and the emergency exits remain operable.
Both the proposed test procedure and performance requirements are closely modeled after the European regulations for large buses. In a separate rulemaking action to improve safety even further, the Department is planning on finalizing requirements later this year for stability control technologies in these vehicles, which would help prevent rollovers from occurring.