ARTICLES

9/28/2017· Automotive - Vehicular

Safety Compromises: Part 1, Introduction

By: Ned Einstein

This new National Bus Trader piece is the first installment of likely a year-long series about types of incidents that result from trade-offs of safety for other benefits -- adherence to unrealistically-tight schedules (or drivers running behind schedule) being the principal culprit. Frankly, of the more than 600 public transportation-related lawsuits in which I have served as an expert witness, roughly half of all incidents see to be the result of some deliberate safety compromise.

10/16/2017· Automotive - Vehicular

Safety Compromises, Part 2: On-Board Slips and Falls

By: Ned Einstein

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced the notion that roughly half of all public transportation-related incidents are the result of a deliberate trade-off of passenger safety for some system or owner's benefit. The most common benefit is the service provider's operating a schedule that is too tight.

11/2/2015· Transportation

Buses and Motorcoaches: Fatigue Monitoring Reality

By: Ned Einstein

In the last installment of National Bus Trader, "Fatigue Monitoring Technology" presented an overview of the approaches and devices in development, and available, to prevent and detect driver fatigue. But unlike prevention technologies, fatigue detection devices raise a unique question: What happens when they work?!

11/18/2015· Transportation

Buses and Motorcoaches: The Price of Digital Madness

By: Ned Einstein

The explosion of digital technology has triggered increases in vehicle costs, purged small and medium-sized companies from the transportation landscape, and contributed to a nationwide shortage of qualified drivers. But it has taken its greatest toll on management, where supervisors with a genuine understanding of transportation are gradually being replaced by armies of "templeteers."

1/31/2018· Automotive - Vehicular

Safety Compromises, Part 3: Wheelchair and Passenger Securement

By: Ned Einstein

Among all the safety compromises pandemic to the public transportation industry, wheelchair tipovers are, by far, the least common to the motorcoach sector compared to other services which deploy accessible vehicles. Of course, this is largely because so few wheelchair users travel by motorcoach.

6/12/2015· Transportation

Buses and Motorcoaches: Safety v. Liability

By: Ned Einstein

No, this is not the name of a case. It refers to a dangerous conflict coursing through the bus and motorcoach industries - a conflict that we cannot afford to let exist.

9/24/2013· Transportation

Buses and Motorcoaches: The Steel Wave

By: Ned Einstein

There are plenty of things obvious to almost any adult, motorist or pedestrian about large vehicles. The most obvious is their size and mass. But at the other end of the spectrum lie nuances rarely understood by anyone who has not driven a vehicle with a long wheelbase: The way such a vehicle turns, and the way its tires "track" compared to those of a typical automobile, van or pickup truck.

7/23/2014· Transportation

The Creep of Common Carrier Status

By: Ned Einstein

As it affects liability, an operating agency's status as a "common carrier" has an enormous impact not only on determining liability itself, but depending on legal constructs in various states, can also affect considerations like immunity and/or the assessment of punitive damages - often barriers to the assessment of damages afforded to public agencies. So except for motorcoaches deployed in commuter/express service under contract to public transit agencies, these latter considerations rarely affect motorcoach operations in the courtroom.

7/18/2013· Transportation

Cheap and Portable Evidence

By: Ned Einstein

As we all know, public transportation is a fiercely competitive business, even in operating environments which are subsidized. But the failure to make tiny investments in safety can be costly in the courtroom.

12/17/2014· Transportation

Compromising Safety to Reduce Liability Exposure

By: Ned Einstein

Every responsible society has mechanisms to hold its citizens, and their organizations, accountable for their actions. With respect to safety, our society effects this goal through the enactment and enforcement of statutes and regulations, and through the process of civil litigation. As with most rules and most societies, many of our transportation organizations have discovered loopholes. Employing these loopholes, they have effectively reduced their liability exposure at the cost of compromising safety.