Monday, Aug. 20, 2001 | 11:05 a.m.
SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
SPRINGFIELD, Tenn. -- Passengers of a Greyhound bus that on Sunday flipped and rolled for several yards with fatal consequences said they had quarreled with the driver because he seemed sleepy -- eerily reminiscent of a Greyhound bus crash near Las Vegas seven weeks ago.
One passenger was killed and 45 people were injured in the crash in Tennessee.
"Everybody was yelling at the driver because he fell asleep twice," Brian Jacobs told WKRN-TV after the bus overturned on Interstate 24 northwest of Nashville.
Greyhound passengers traveling through Nevada also said they tried to rouse their driver July 3 shortly before the speeding bus crashed through a guard rail off I-15 at Glendale northeast of Las Vegas.
The driver, 61-year-old Jerry Davis, fell asleep at the wheel, according to a Nevada Highway Patrol report released last week. Davis died and 36 of 37 passengers were injured. Passengers had twice filed complaints against Davis for sleeping or drowsiness at the wheel, in 1993 and in May. Davis had been off for 13 hours before he started his route from Grand Junction, Colo., to Las Vegas, Greyhound officials said.
The Nevada and Tennessee accidents came at a time when the federal agency that regulates buses and trucks, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, is already mulling new driver exhaustion rules in the face of mounting criticism.
Current rules say a driver can drive 10 consecutive hours, with eight hours off, driving no more than 70 hours in a seven-day period. That makes it possible for a driver to drive 16 hours in a 24-hour period.
The FMCSA in May 2000 proposed a 12-hour limit in a 24-hour period, sparking a wave of criticism from the trucking and bus industries, among others. About 53,000 public comments flooded in. The agency put the proposal on hold at least until the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, FMCSA spokesman David Longo said. By then, the agency should have a President Bush-appointed administrator, he said.
"Clearly, everyone is in agreement that the current rules need to be changed," Longo said. The question is how, he said.
In the meantime the agency likely will help the National Transportation Safey Board in investigating the Tennessee accident, which may include a standard review of Greyhound's overall safety records.
"When people die, we have to look for reasons and ways to stop it," Longo said.
There is no federally mandated training required for bus drivers beyond a commercial driver's license, Longo said. Some states have stricter rules about driver requirements than others, he said.
The federal government has not tracked the causes of bus accidents, Longo said. But his agency is preparing a study of 1,000 accident causes, he said. A draft of the report may be available in the next several months, he said.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol was expected to release results of its investigation today. Kristin Parsley, spokeswoman for Greyhound, would not comment until the investigation was complete.
Ten people remained hospitalized this morning. Some on board said they rescued three fellow passengers by hoisting the bus off of them before emergency crews arrived.
The 1993 MCI bus was eastbound when it drifted from the right lane to the left lane and hit a median, Department of Safety spokeswoman Dana Keeton said.
When the bus started to slide on wet grass, the driver overcorrected to get back on the road and flipped the bus on its right side.
"The bus actually spun around and overturned," Keeton said.
Mark Linder, 33, of Augusta, Ga., died when he was thrown from the vehicle and was trapped underneath it, Keeton said.
Troopers said the driver, Nathaniel B. Waugh, 52, of St. Louis, was treated and released.
Vincent Ford said fellow passengers had been arguing with the driver prior to the wreck. "They said he was kind of dozing off, and they believe he went on and fell asleep," Ford told the Tennessean newspaper in today's editions.
Keeton said the description of the crash by witnesses "fits in with that (a sleepy driver) in that he drifted over, hit the soft ground and then jerked hard back to the right. But until we get that in an official capacity, I can't say for sure."
The bus door was ripped off its hinges and found about 75 yards from where the bus stopped. All the windows on its right side were broken. Mud streaked the side of the bus where it slid along the ground. Suitcases and clothes littered the crash scene.
"Everybody was scared for their life," Jacobs said. "The bus flipped over and rolled at least two times and fell on its side and slid about two football fields."
The accident occurred just after 7 a.m. CDT following a stop at the Fort Campbell Army post and Clarksville near the Kentucky border 30 miles northwest of Nashville.
The driver boarded the 47-passenger bus in St. Louis at 12:15 a.m. and was headed to Nashville, where another driver was scheduled to take the bus to Atlanta, said Lynn Brown, another spokeswoman for Dallas-based Greyhound. Greyhound officials said the driver had been off-duty for two days before the wreck.
The accident is the third in Tennessee this summer involving a Greyhound bus.
On July 1, about a dozen people were injured when a Greyhound carrying 36 passengers overturned about 4 a.m. on I-65 some 20 miles north of Nashville. The driver, James Alnuti, ran off the road and hit a tree.
A week later in East Tennessee, a Greyhound bound for Los Angeles overturned along I-40 near Knoxville when the driver swerved to avoid an accident with a tractor-trailer and another truck during a rain storm. Fifteen people were injured.
The Tennessee and Nevada accidents follow a June 1998 accident in which a retiring, 61-year-old driver on his last run crashed into a parked tractor-trailer on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, killing himself, his wife and four other passengers. The National Transportation Safety Board later ruled the accident was probably caused in part by a fatigued driver on antihistamine medication who lost alertness.
The NTSB in that case also said that "because of the scheduled irregular work-rest cycle and possible sleeping difficulties, the bus driver may have developed a sleep debt over the four days of his shift." Greyhound had said the driver was not fatigued, but had heart trouble.
Greyhound officials said the company has a safety record of 0.55 accidents per 1 million miles, compared to 1.5 accidents per 1 million miles for all commercial vehicles.
Sun reporter Benjamin Grove contributed to this report.
Associated Press reporter Teresa M. Walker also contributed to this report.
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