Interstate buses that do curbside pickups — like the ones that congregate around Penn Station and Chinatown — are seven times more likely to be in a fatal crash than traditional carriers, according to a new report.
Low-budget curb-side bus companies had 1.4 deadly accidents per 100 vehicles from January 2005 to March 2011, the National Transportation Safety Board found in the report.
Those figures include the tragic World Wide Travel bus crash, that left 15 people dead returning to Chinatown from Mohegan Sun in March.
Bus operators based in a station — like the Port Authority Terminal — had .02 deadly accidents per 100 vehicles in the same time period.
The report found that the low-budget bus lines — virtually unheard of just a little over a decade ago — now outnumber the conventional bus lines, which operate out of terminals.
There are 71 curbside operators in the US now, compared to 51 terminal-based lines.
All interstate buses are regulated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, but the report found that there are not enough inspectors to monitor the fast-growing industry.
The FMCSA has only 878 employees monitoring more than 765,000 US motor carriers.