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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 1 - Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Operational Differences and Similarities Among the Motorcoach, School Bus, and Trucking Industries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13809.
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Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT), through the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Adminis- tration (FMCSA), regulates the interstate commercial motor vehicle (CMV) operations of motorcoach firms, trucking oper- ators, and school bus contractors. An extensive body of liter- ature describes each of the CMV industry segments. U.S. DOT and FMCSA have focused significant resources on organizing and documenting the topology and operational characteristics of the interstate for-hire trucking industry, but comparable information on the commercial passenger and school bus contractor industries is not readily available. More impor- tantly, there is no systematic, detailed study that compares operational similarities and differences across the three CMV segments. The lack of clear and readily accessible profiles of the CMV industry makes it difficult to quickly and accurately assess the appropriateness and impact of proposed regula- tions. This is a significant problem for FMCSA, which is charged with improving the safety of CMVs. FMCSA’s orga- nizational goal is to reduce the number of fatalities involving trucks from 2.4 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled in 2001 to 1.65 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled by 2008. Lacking readily accessible data that contrast and compare the CMV industry segments, FMCSA must devote significant staff time to assembling and reassembling the appropriate data on a project-by-project basis. Other federal and state reg- ulatory agencies, as well as the CMV industry segments them- selves, also spend considerable resources searching for and organizing comparative data. This Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis assem- bles the best available data, develops consistent profiles of each CMV industry segment, and presents that data in a for- mat useful to FMCSA, the states, and industry. It collects and compares operational measures such as the number of U.S. operators, fleet sizes, accident statistics, vehicle-miles of travel, and business models. This information will serve as an important resource. It can be used not only as a foundation for regulatory approaches, but as a learning tool for FMCSA and other agency staff responsible for these three CMV industry segments. Note that transit buses are not included in this syn- thesis. Comprehensive statistics on the transit industry are available from the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database, available at www.ntdprogram.com. Describing and comparing the operational differences and similarities across the motorcoach, school bus, and trucking industries improves FMCSA’s ability to develop more effec- tive and efficient regulations and programs. This study offers a comprehensive description of each of the three CMV seg- ments, including (1) the number of carriers in each segment, broken down into comparable size categories; (2) the signif- icant “type-groupings” (i.e., private, for-hire, truckload, less- than-truckload, charter, tour, scheduled service, etc.) within each segment, and the number of carriers in each type- grouping, broken down into comparable size categories; (3) historical crash, injury, and fatality data for each of the segments; and (4) the economic environment within which each of the segments and type-groupings operates: source of revenues, competitive factors, driver compensation (including the basis for that compensation, e.g., miles traveled, hours worked, etc.), regulations, hours of service, full-time/part-time driver use, and other appropriate measures. The study is based on a comprehensive review of existing available data, supplemented by interviews with various indus- try stakeholders. Where possible, statistics are presented for the entire national company and vehicle population (interstate and intrastate, for-hire and private, etc.). However, data are most readily available for interstate and for-hire segments of the industries. As a result, this synthesis is not meant to be a sta- tistically defensible national survey; national statistics that can be disaggregated by industry segment are generally not avail- able, and the aggregation of component data from various industry sources is not necessarily a valid methodological approach. Therefore, this synthesis identifies the data limita- tions and concludes with a section describing gaps in the data. 2

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TRB’s Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis 6: Operational Differences and Similarities Among the Motorcoach, School Bus, and Trucking Industries is designed as a single resource for information on profiles, safety statistics, and general business operations for these three commercial vehicle industries.

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