The National Transportation Safety Board announced this week that it will hold a two-day symposium in May to review the progress of large truck and bus safety over the past decade.

"During this forum, we will review the effectiveness of established programs as well as new initiatives in motor carrier operations and vehicle safety to ensure we are doing all we can to make our nation's highways safer," said NTSB Member Robert L. Sumwalt, who will also chair the forum.

The Washington, D.C., event starts on May 10, as it examines government determination of carrier fitness, including the new entrant screening process and other federal, state, and industry oversight initiatives. Discussions will move to electronic on-board recorders, hours of service, safety culture and vehicle size and weight before concluding with the training and licensing of commercial drivers. The latter includes commercial learner's permits, employer notification systems, graduated CDLs, and accuracy and consistency of data processing.

Sessions will then center on crash avoidance and crash mitigation. The group will discuss electronic stability control, collision avoidance systems and other emerging technologies that may be used to prevent crashes. The attention will then turn to passenger restraints, vehicle crashworthiness and highway barrier systems.

"We will certainly use this forum to review our advances over the [last] ten years, but more importantly, we will use it as an opportunity to generate new ideas that will lead to future successes in truck and bus safety," added Sumwalt.

Other NTSB News

The board voted on March 18 to perform a face lift on its "Most Wanted Safety List of Improvements." Currently, the list of safety improvements for aviation, highway, marine and rail contains 56 individual recommendations. The new version would be limited to a maximum of 10 issue areas, each supported by recommendations. The formerly separate state and federal "Most Wanted Lists" will also be combined into a single, comprehensive list.

NTSB board members each year will select the Most Wanted List issues via a written voting process, and the updated list will be unveiled at an annual press conference.

Enhanced school bus occupant protection was removed from the list two years ago following the publishing of NHTSA's final rule on lap/shoulder seat belts. Current recommendations of interest to the school transportation industry include the FMCSA issues of electronic on-board data recorders to maintain accurate records of driver hours of service and preventing medically-unqualified drivers from operating commercial motor vehicles. Recommendations to NHTSA include collision prevention technologies and enhanced protection of motorcoach passengers. Meanwhile, NTSB calls on states to improve child occupant protection by requiring booster seats for young children up to age 8, except on school buses, and eliminating distractions for younger drivers.