U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) this week called on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to provide information about its tracking of large truck and bus crashes.
A letter to FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs follows a June report from ProPublica/WBUR that found a large bus company’s serious crashes were largely unaccounted for in FMCSA’s crash data, at least when looking at the specific company's data.
“According to the most recent data available, nearly 5,000 people were killed in crashes involving large trucks and buses in 2024,” the Senators wrote, adding that FMCSA “uses information from these crashes to identify specific truck and bus companies for targeted enforcement, which can range from a warning letter to being placed out-of-service.”
The June 8 report, the letter added, “found that FMCSA is missing critical crash data for a company that operates school buses, making it impossible for the agency to accurately identify and target high-risk motor carriers like these.”
Overdrive contacted FMCSA for comment on the letter and the ProPublica/WBUR report and will provide an update if a response is received.
The ProPublica/WBUR report centered on an April 2025 school bus accident in Boston that killed a kindergartner after he was dropped off on the wrong side of the street. The bus driver was hired and trained by transnational bus company Transdev, and the investigation found that 42 fatal crashes involving Transdev over the past 10 years were missing from Transdev’s FMCSA records.
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It’s not that the crashes are totally unaccounted for in the federal database, however. The Senators and the ProPublica/WBUR report note that crash attribution is at the discretion of law enforcement responding to the crashes, and many times in Transdev’s case, FMCSA’s database listed Transdev crashes under the names of the government agency that hired Transdev or the name of a company Transdev acquired.
According to the Senators, FMCSA instructs law enforcement officers completing crash investigations to “determine which entity ‘controls’ or ‘directs’ the bus.”
The issue “raises serious concerns that FMCSA may be undercounting crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving large trucks and buses, and thus jeopardizing its mission to reduce such incidents and protect the safety of Americans,” the Senators added. “Without accurate and complete data, it is impossible for FMCSA to properly target enforcement on unsafe companies, because the agency lacks the critical data needed to conclude they are unsafe."
The Senators also highlighted what they called an “overall lack of enforcement actions taken under the Trump Administration. ... More broadly, FMCSA enforcement actions have declined since President Trump took office,” they wrote. “According to its own data, FMCSA completed approximately 1,400 enforcement cases against motor carriers in 2025, compared to nearly 4,000 in 2024 -- a 65% decrease.”
An Overdrive analysis of safety ratings issued in calendar year 2025 found a similar though not as extreme fall-off in ratings issued in 2025, an indication that state and federal auditors weren't as active as in prior years. Between 2022 and 2024, the trend in ratings had been rising slightly.
Asked about the fall-off in ratings in June, an agency spokesperson emphasized enforcement action against chameleon carriers and entities without valid principal place of business addresses, likewise all the work cleaning up its training provider and electronic logging device registries, where FMCSA's been particularly active in 2025-'26.
The Congressional letter calls on FMCSA’s Barrs to report by Aug. 12 on a number of issues, including how the agency “is addressing limitations of its crash data and keeping the traveling public safe by targeting high-risk motor carriers for enforcement.”
