2nd bus crash puts focus on driver fatigue

BOWLING GREEN, Va. -- Energy drinks, coffee and even talking on his cellphone weren't enough to keep bus driver Kin Yiu Cheung awake after a night on the road.

About an hour before dawn, nearly seven hours into his shift, Cheung dozed off as his bus carrying 59 passengers barreled northward on Interstate 95 in Virginia earlier this month, according to court documents.

The bus veered off the highway. When Cheung tried to swerve back onto the road, the bus hit an embankment and overturned, authorities say. Four passengers were killed.

Attorneys for Cheung, who is in jail without bond, have called the wreck a "tragic accident."

Prosecutors have charged Cheung, 37, of Flushing, with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. But sleep scientists, safety advocates and labor leaders say the roots of the accident lie with an industry whose economic model often results in drivers on the road with too little rest and at hours when their bodies naturally crave sleep.

"The consequence is an entire industry populated by people not getting enough sleep," said Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents drivers at Greyhound and other companies.

Studies show that between 13 percent and 31 percent of commercial vehicle crashes are due to driver fatigue, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Recent deadly crashes involving motor coaches have heightened concern about driver fatigue. In March, a bus returning passengers to New York's Chinatown after a night of gambling ran off a highway and hit a utility pole. Fifteen passengers were killed and many more injured.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which oversees the nation's estimated 4,000 passenger bus companies, had flagged the bus company in the New York crash, World Wide Travel, for possible extra scrutiny due to violations involving driver fatigue.

Sky Express Inc. of Charlotte, N.C., which employed Cheung to drive from North Carolina to New York, had been cited for 46 violations involving driver fatigue rules over two years, ranking it in the bottom 14 percent of motor carriers. Passengers on the bus that crashed overheard Cheung complaining in a cellphone call that he was tired and that he didn't have much turnaround time between trips, according to a court affidavit.

Federal officials were in the process of shutting down the company at the time of the crash. A timeline released by the Department of Transportation showed Sky Express would have stopped operations the weekend before the May 31 crash if regulators hadn't extended their review an extra 10 days.

Federal regulations allow bus drivers up to 10 hours behind the wheel followed by a minimum of eight hours' rest, making it legal for a driver to work an entire shift and start a second shift all in one 24-hour period, said Greg Belenky, a sleep expert at Washington State University.

One of NTSB's top safety recommendations has been to equip bus and trucks with devices that track the number of driver hours on the road. A proposed Transportation Department rule would require companies to equip vehicles with the recorders, but the rule isn't final.