TUESDAY, Aug. 28, 2001 (HealthDayNews) -- Road safety officials say a 1999 New Orleans bus crash that killed 22 women on a gambling junket might have been avoided with tighter standards for evaluating the health of bus drivers.
The National Transportation Safety Board today released its investigation into the accident, calling for stricter medical standards for bus drivers, as well as more careful drug screening. The driver of the bus had a history of severe health problems, including diabetes and heart disease. He had also repeatedly failed drug tests, including one in the wake of the accident that showed he'd used marijuana hours before the incident.
But the final report from the NTSB says the driver's medical problems played a more important role in the crash.
"What we found was that, while the marijuana and perhaps the fatigue and a sedating antihistamine may have contributed [to the accident], we believe it was the incapacitation due to his severe medical conditions that actually caused him to run off the road," says Lauren Peduzzi, a spokeswoman for the agency.
As a result, the NTSB's recommendations stress the need to tighten up the medical certification process for drivers.
"The failure of the medical certification process to remove unfit drivers is a systemic, not an isolated, problem," the report says. Because many doctors who examine drivers aren't aware of the requirements for certification, "drivers with serious medical conditions may not be evaluated sufficiently to determine whether their condition poses a risk to highway safety."
The NTSB report offers numerous suggestions to help correct the problem, including educating doctors who examine drivers about certification guidelines, and establishing a tracking system for applications for certification, and a system for reporting medical conditions that occur between driver certification periods.
The report also calls on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to bulk up its safety standards within the next two years for bus passenger compartments, as well as for bus roofs and windows. And it says the Department of Transportation should create a system to gather failed drug and alcohol tests, and require companies to search the database before hiring a driver.
The Mother's Day wreck claimed the lives of 22 members of a gambling club for seniors who were headed to a casino in Bay St. Louis on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. Fifteen other passengers were seriously injured when the bus ran off the road, through a guardrail and into an embankment.
The driver of the vehicle, Frank Bedell, had a history of diabetes, and heart and kidney failure, and was undergoing dialysis three times a week at the time, safety officials say. The 46-year-old had also undergone treatment for dehydration and low blood pressure 12 hours before the accident.
Investigators later determined that Bedell had failed to accurately disclose his medical condition during a 1998 physical exam that was given to his employer, Custom Bus Charters.
However, on the same exam he listed a number of medications that he was taking for his health problems, leading his doctor to diagnose him with congestive heart failure. Even so, Bedell was given the medical OK to stay on the road. He died of a heart attack about three months after the crash.
Bedell had also failed several drug tests in earlier driving jobs, a fact Custom Bus Charters said it didn't know.
Despite a slew of dramatic, deadly accidents in recent years, experts say buses remain one of the safest modes of transportation. Government figures from 1990 show that for every 100 million miles traveled, there will be 45 deaths from motorcycle crashes, 1.2 in cars, and just 0.06 in buses.
What to Do: For more on bus safety, visit the National Transportation Safety Board. To find out more about road safety, check out the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
