UNSAFE TRUCKS

September 7, 2000
		In the first installment of a two-part series, Betty Ann Bowser reports on the issue of truck safety on the nation's highways.

Sept. 6, 2000: Reports on Congressional hearings on the recall of Firestone tires used on Ford SUVs. Aug. 22, 2000: Three experts assess the fallout from the tire recall. Aug. 8, 2000: Examining federally-funded construction projects. May 31, 1999: Some new hi-tech ways to avoid traffic Browse the NewsHour's coverage of transportation     Department of Transportation	CYNTHIA COZZOLINO: Hi, my name is Cynthia Cozzolino, and... BETTY ANN BOWSER: Cynthia Cozzolino became an activist for truck safety one year ago. CYNTHIA COZZOLINO: We lost my stepbrother and his wife, and my nephew and niece to an intoxicated, unsafe load. BETTY ANN BOWSER: She was watching television when a Los Angeles station broke into regular programming with pictures of a terrible accident involving a big truck. CYNTHIA COZZOLINO: They zoomed into a little girl's pink suitcase, and then a little boy's football that were laying on the ground, and, you know, my heart just... I just thought, oh, gosh, that's just horrible. I can't imagine being, you know, their family. I mean, what do you do, and this is such a tragedy. I mean, oh, I just feel so sorry for their families.
	Tragedy on the highways
	BETTY ANN BOWSER: But moments later, Cozzolino learned it was her family-- brother Randy, his wife Melissa, and their two children, Skylar and Lonnie were dead. Concrete pipes weighing 46,000 pounds had broken loose from a flatbed truck and smashed into Cozzolino's brother's car and another vehicle. In all, six people were killed. The driver of the truck, Richard Sommervile, was drunk at the time of the accident. He's currently in jail awaiting trial on criminal charges, but no charges have been brought against the company that employed him. Every year, more than 5,000 people are killed in accidents involving big trucks, but no one knows how many of those accidents are actually caused by trucks, because no definitive research has ever been done on the subject. Still, safety advocates say because the number of fatalities is so high, they want the federal government to do more to make highways safer. Virginia Congressman Frank Wolfe is a leading truck safety reformer in Congress. FRANK WOLFE: It's a major problem. It's a major safety problem. 14 to 15 people every day die in an accident with a truck. That is like a major airplane crash taking place every two weeks in the country. Over 5,000 people a year die. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Wolfe worked for years with safety advocates and families of victims like Cozzolino to create a new agency to oversee truck safety. In January, it became the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, operating under the Department of Transportation. Congress gave the new agency authority to shut down unfit motor carriers. The company that owned the truck in the Cozzolino accident was First Class Service Trucking of Tracey, California. Records show that in the months before and after the accident, nearly half the company's trucks flunked safety inspections. And an investigation of the company itself showed someone falsely signed off as "corrected" safety violations on company trucks, when, in fact, the defects had not been fixed, and sent those falsified records to the court. First Class Service refused the NewsHour's request for an interview. One year after the accident, Cozzolino thinks First Class Service should have been shut down by the new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. CYNTHIA COZZOLINO: I think six people dying should send them, you know, a little bit of concern. I don't understand why it's so difficult to shut a company down and why they have not done so yet, even with this new administration. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Clyde Hart is acting director of the new agency.
	Tracking truck troubles
	CLYDE HART, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration: We sent our people into that carrier to look at their records. We did find one or two irregularities, but we didn't find enough to shut them down. We can only go by what we're given by statute to do, and if it's not there, if the evidence is not there to allow us to do that, we can't do that. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Hart says shutting down unfit motor carriers is a long, difficult, and complicated process. But the agency says new rules expected to go into effect at the end of November will make the process easier, and under those new rules, it expects to shut down more unfit carriers. Still, the Department of Transportation's own inspector general questions the new agency's will to shut down unfit carriers. In testimony to Congress, I.G. Ken Mead said, "Authority to shut down unsafe trucking companies has not been implemented." In fact, since becoming the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the new agency has shut down only two unsafe trucking companies. KENNETH MEAD, DOT Inspector General: We're not satisfied by a long stretch. They need to shut down these firms. There are 10,000 trucking firms in this country that received an unsatisfactory safety fitness rating; 2,000 of them received that rating in the past year alone. Virtually all of them are continuing to operate on our highways. CLYDE HART: We're interested in putting out a proposal that reduces fatalities, reduces injuries, and doesn't... BETTY ANN BOWSER: But acting director Hart said Congress hasn't given the new agency enough money to run an aggressive enforcement program. And he insists things are improving. CLYDE HART: We are trying very hard to put the bad guys out of business. Our safety... safety reviews are up, 60-some... 60-something, 68 percent. The number of fines or the amount of fines has doubled. Our enforcement cases are up a third. In fact... and our deaths are down about 10 percent between 1998 and 1999. So I think we're doing... We're on the right track, and we're making progress. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The agency also says it doesn't want to be judged by the number of unfit carriers it closes down. But industry leaders say there's not been enough progress. Dave Osiecki is spokesman for the country's largest trucking organization. DAVE OSIECKI: We want more enforcement. Let's find those guys. Let's find those people who are blatantly violating the law and causing tragedies. Let's take them off the road. That's in our best interest; that's in the best interest of highway safety.
	The need for a national system
	BETTY ANN BOWSER: Critics also say the new agency has no idea of the real number of traffic accidents that take place each year involving trucks, how many truck drivers have bad safety records, or how many unsafe trucks there are on the road. John McQuaid is president of the National Private Truck Council. JOHN McQUAID, National Private Truck Council: Right now we have a very dysfunctional national system of data that does not allow the federal government, that has responsibility for interstate truck safety, to get data from states concerning the driving records and the operating histories of companies that are on the highways. And we believe that part of the solution to this problem is to having that data put... sent to a central repository so that it can be analyzed and used as the basis for going out and doing those inspections, and dealing with those kinds of operations once and for all. SPOKESMAN: If you can't shift, come on over here... BETTY ANN BOWSER: The new agency says part of the problem is that states don't report all their data to the federal government, and efforts are currently underway to improve the reporting process. But no matter what the new agency does to improve its record, when it comes to truck inspections, it is fighting an uphill battle. By law, the federal government only has jurisdiction over interstate trucking. The Department of Transportation gives money to the states to fund inspection programs for big trucks that travel interstate highways. The results of those inspections get reported to the federal government. Currently, 25% of trucks inspected under the program are pulled out of service, are found to be unsafe. SPOKESMAN: The trailer is out of service until you get the turn signal fixed. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Inspector General Mead says that shows the magnitude of the problem. KENNETH MEAD: It's incredible that one out of every four trucks inspected are found to be unfit for continued service, and are ordered out of service because the safety violation of that truck is in such serious condition. If you were told that the FAA went and inspected an airline and found 25 percent of the planes to be in an un-airworthy condition, and said, "gee, that's okay. You can continue business," you would be appalled. And I believe this new agency needs to bring some of the same safety values that we have in aviation and apply them as well to truck safety. CLYDE HART: Nobody could be happy with that number. But realize that it is a multi-jurisdictional problem, and it requires multi-jurisdictional solutions. But nobody can be happy with that number, and our whole job here is to try and bring those numbers down. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The federal government isn't the only organization that inspects big trucks. Many local police departments also have motor carrier inspection teams, and their out- of-service rates are even higher than the federal government's. OFFICER CHRIS RIZZO, Truck Inspector: It looks like the bumper... It looks like it hit something, and the bumper bent back, and it cracked the valve.
	Insuring the safety U.S. highways
	BETTY ANN BOWSER: Officer Chris Rizzo not only inspects interstate trucks, but also those that travel the local roads in Loudoun County, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. OFFICER CHRIS RIZZO: Well, the hoses that goes into the valve here, it's cracked off, and now you don't have a good seal. The air's leaking out. BETTY ANN BOWSER: For the past three years, Rizzo has pulled more than half of the trucks he inspects out of service. OFFICER CHRIS RIZZO: When he sits at a traffic light and he has the brake pushed down, it loses pressure. If he makes a long, hard application, it also loses pressure. When it loses enough pressure, the back wheels where the spring brake, the emergency brake are, would lock up. If that happened when he was going down the road, the vehicle would go out of control, spinning. It would be like driving down the road and pulling on your emergency brake in your car. It would throw the vehicle into a spin. BETTY ANN BOWSER: But all of Rizzo's paperwork goes into this file cabinet in Loudoun County. None of it ever makes its way to the Department of Transportation's computers. Federal Motor Carrier Acting Administrator Hart says it would be too complicated to include intrastate carrier inspections. CLYDE HART: Frankly, I have all I can do to look at the interstate carriers. I wouldn't know how to begin to look at the intrastate carriers and, frankly, with the different conditions that obtained from state to state, how to begin to even manage that process. OFFICER CHRIS RIZZO: I need you to sign this. It just says you won't drive it until they fix it. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Rizzo thinks if the new agency was really serious about truck safety, they'd do something to include local truck inspections in their database. OFFICER CHRIS RIZZO: A good example of how something can happen is if we stop a truck and there's repeated problems, and then that truck goes down the road, it's not been properly repaired, and somebody is killed later on. Unless I read about it in the newspapers and hear about it myself, there'll be no way for somebody four or five jurisdictions away to even know that we stopped the vehicle with those problems and identified those problems in the past. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Soon, the problem may grow and become even more expensive to police. At some point, under the North American Free Trade Agreement, large numbers of Mexican trucks will be allowed to bring freight across the border, and their current out-of-service rate is over 40 percent