Tsb. Captioning performed byc captioning performed by vitac i do. I think thats a perfect example of one of the incentives that the federal government could use to provide increased Safety Measures for kids on school buses. Right. And back to ms. Poland. In your investigation of the oakland bus fire, you noted that the School Bus Engine designs often failed to mitigate the spread of gases into the passenger compartment. That can exacerbate a situation involving a fire, but can you speak to whether or not these fumes can regularly enter into the passenger compartment even in the absence of a fire . Our investigation, of course, focused on the postcrash fire this that event and when there was that significant fire in the engine compartment how the incomplete fire wall led to the fire being able to spread into the passenger compartment. Can you comment on the entrance of fumes into the bus cavity . The ntsb currently does not have a position on that aspect. Okay. Thank you. I yield back, madam chair. Thank you very much. Mr. Garcia. Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. Ms. Poland, we have introduced hr 2416 the safe to drive act which would direct the department of transportation to use some money already appropriated for grants combating distracted driving to new grants for the same purpose but which would be easier to qualify for. To what extent does the national Highway Traffic Safety Administration see distracted driving especially from cellphone use affecting the safety of school buses . So the ntsb has commonly looked at distraction and, in fact, this has been an item on our most wanted list for many years. Distraction can come from a variety of different forms and we focused on distraction for School Bus Drivers. Of course, in all of the discussions youre hearing today we think that oversight of the drivers is critical and thats dealing with the actions of the driver, including medical fitness and some of the many other aspects, but also theres Technological Solutions if there is distraction involved that we can mitigate the effects of a crash before they happen or even make that crash less vulnerable to the occupants inside. As you look at the data just crashes over i mean, take your time period. Has there been a consistent primary factor that has contributed to School Bus Crashes over the last several years or is each case just unique such that you cant establish a trend . Or is the sample size not large enough . So the ntsb typically investigates extremely severe crashes that may not be represented of all crashes, but obviously theres a wide variety of causes and thats why we look at different recommendations to address those countermeasures. So youre hearing some of those today from proper oversight of the drivers to technological interventions to also increasing the time to evacuate in postcrash events such as fires or water immersion. The question for you or anyone on the panel that wants to take a swing, to what extent do we think overall congestion on the roads, increasing congestion which obviously would vary regionally, locally, is creating more safety concerns . So, for example, i have a bill that would allow logging trucks access to highways to get them off local roads which i view as an environmentally friendly and safety thing. Its easier to transit without going around in green way, wisconsin. Also according to the national Highway Traffic Safety Administration getting on and off the bus, crossing the street, waiting for the bus can put children at significant danger. In your Expert Opinion would reducing congestion in general but specifically reducing sort of large vehicles like logging trucks from local trucks improve the safety of school buses . So school buses are large vehicles and typically in most crashes with Passenger Vehicles they fare very well. Unfortunately in crashes with other large vehicles thats where we see the vulnerabilities, especially high speed rollovers. We also have been careful of unintended consequences because the ntsb has investigated a number of commercial Motor Vehicle crashes, especially in work zones where there may be some sort of a vehicle that isnt stopped for a queue that is developed for a work zone. I guess i would encourage you to consider unintended consequences and also Technological Solutions such as we were discussing earlier of forward Collision Avoidance and automatic emergency braking for all commercial vehicles. Yes, maam. Congressman, i would just add certainly ntsb is the expert on the statistics, but our tragic crash happened on a highway. So, you know, with a large vehicle striking a school bus on a highway, a major highway. So clearing the local roads wouldnt have been helpful in that situation. I think, again, unintended consequences, there are there are a lot of different ways to look at it. I certainly respect unintended consequences, probably the main reason im sitting on this side of the aisle. I appreciate all of your answers and thank you for the dedicated work that you do. Im sure it wasnt unintended that you are on that side of the aisle. Thank you very much, mr. Gallagher. Mr. Malinowski. Thank you, madam chair. Mr. Gallagher, is always welcome to switch sides of the aisle. We can talk afterwards. And i would have to not respect unintended consequences. Never mind. Ms. Fulton, first of all, welcome. As a fellow new jerseyan im happy to see you here and very pleased to see the strides that new jersey has been making in improving School Bus Safety going forward, especially after the tragic accident in mt. Olive which happened in my district, as you know. I was able to meet mirandas father and sister just a couple weeks ago when they came to washington to advocate for greater federal involvement in preventing tragedies like that bus crash from ever happening again. In that context i wanted to ask you to say a little bit more about new jerseys employer notification system. I think you began to a little bit earlier. As i understand it was recently updated to better prevent bad drivers from getting behind the wheel of a bus, and i wonder if you could explain how the system works and some of the changes that we have made. Yes. Thank you, congressman malinowski. So we at Motor Vehicle when a notice of suspension is posted by the courts or Law Enforcement to a drivers license and that drivers license has a School Bus Endorsement, a report is automatically generated. And we do this on a daily basis. Every business day and for us saturday is a business day so six days a week we generate a report. Anyone who holds that School Bus Endorsement whose license has been suspended and that goes directly to the department of ed. Then the department of ed was notifying operators. The change in the law first shortens the time that the employer has and the department of education so department of education has 24 hours to notify the operator, whether its the board of ed or the private operator, that this driver has been suspended and they must confirm within another 24 hours that that driver is off the road. That that driver is not driving a school bus. And the second piece of the legislation is that we dont just do that for suspensions or 12 points or over, which generates a suspension. We are now required to do that if you get six points or more or three moving violations in a leeyear period. So there are more stringent requirements and the notification has shortened. This is still relatively new, but thats thats how it works. And so lets move from that to the across state lines issue. If somebody had an infraction, lets say someone had the equivalent of six points in another state, moved to new jersey. What would happen . And how soon would it happen . Well, first, congressman, if theres a notice of suspension that comes from another state, we may get that any number of ways, depending on whether we have an agreement with that state where we get something electronically or whether we get it in the mail the way that we communicate with some of our sister states. So it may come in the mail and that can take time. It has to be managed manually. The six points, now, thats a new new jersey rule and we have not yet gotten the that to happen automatically. Right . So theres not an automatic trigger of six points that come in from another state. Now, i guess once it gets posted to the new jersey driver license then we are in state and we can manage it, but the real trick is getting notice from the other state. How long does it take for a conviction that happens in pennsylvania or new york, how long does it take for that conviction to get posted in new jersey . Thats manual process many times. So that just leads to the obvious final question which is whether a national ens employer notification system would be helpful to you. A National Notification system would be helpful for us for sure. You know, i know ive referenced anba before but we actually use their existing system for other cdl system so that would be helpful. Great. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Malinowski. It may be that theres something that this committee can do to make sure that that National System occurs, so i appreciate those questions. Mr. Palmer. Thank you, madam chairman. Ms. Poland, the nhtsa found 97 pedestrians under the age of 18 were killed in School Transportation related crashes between 2008 and 2017. Do you know how many were struck by vehicles going around the bus out of that 97 . The National Transportation safety board, does anyone have an idea . Certainly theres Data Available on those crash statistics. The ntsb accidents are a portion of those numbers that youre looking at. As i mentioned in my Opening Statement, we have three ongoing investigations in three different states where we are looking at whats happening on those high speed roadways. I have several questions that i want to ask about this, but i think its important to know how many of these fatalities were the result of people going around the bus, as opposed to the bus actually running over the child. Youve got both those situations. And the reason i bring that up is that in reading the testimonies here, mr. Benishs testimony pointed out that the passing of stopped school buses during loading or unloading illegal in all 50 states has reached epidemic proportions. In most recent annual Observational Survey in 2018, 105,306 School Bus Drivers in 38 states reported almost 84,000 vehicles that illegally passed your stopped school bus in one day. That is incomprehensible to me that that many people are that stupid or that unconcerned about the safety of the kids on that bus. Based on the observations if you projected that out over 180 Day School Year thats 50 million vehicles illegally passing a school bus. So i think its important to know, madam chairman, how many of these fatalities or injuries are because people are passing school buses. I think we may need to take a look particularly at the state level for those of you involved with the state legislature as ms. Fulton or mr. Mclean, that the penalties ought to be much more severe for going around a school bus when its stopped. I think it would be important to know, you know, whats going on with that. And the other thing that i want to ask is a number of these accidents are in rural areas. Any idea, ms. Poland, about why so many of them in rural areas . I mean, we had a lot of discussion about congested streets, thats really not an issue out where i grew up, and i rode a school bus when i was a kid, bus 64, by the way. Well, i guess its unfortunate to report that the National Association of state directors of Pupil Transportation yesterday put out the new statistics for the last school year and now theyre reporting that theres over 95,000 illegal passings in that single day from 39 states that are reporting that information. As i mentioned earlier, the ntsb is looking at three crashes, all of those are in what you would classify as rural areas, they are on high speed roadways, 55 mile per hour roadways, and so our investigators are currently looking at a variety of different countermeasures including route planning and technological countermeasures to be able to make recommendations to our board to assist in this process. I want to get to some questions that will lead to some solutions, okay . So what im suggesting here is that we look at these crash statistics, rural versus suburban, urban, look at the number of vehicles that are going around school buses. Id like to know whether or not these are rural incidents or in other areas. In regard to those higherspeed highways, where i currently live we have a highway where its 55, but during the certain times of day when kids are coming to school and when kids are leaving the school that speed limit is reduced to about 25 Miles Per Hour. It may be particularly in rural areas you treat this like you would a construction zone. Somebody brought this up, madam chairman, i think its a pretty good idea that maybe during those times we do it like a construction zone. We notify you ahead of time you have to bring your speed down because youve got school buses operating in the area. I know thats going to create some issues for transport vehicles and things like that, but i will pay the extra cost for a loaf of bread or a bottle of water, whatever, if it saves the life of a kid. One last thing, if i may, madam chairman im kind of on a roll. If i could look at this, too, and this is something that i wanted to ask mr. Mclean about. The legislative role in this and for ms. Fulton, too. My concern is about the abuse of alcohol and some states have requirements for, you know, how many hours after a bus driver consumes alcohol. That should also include recreational marijuana. The thing that concerns me is that there are commercial drivers who lose their license and in a lot of cases they selfreport. I think we need to have a database where if someone applies for a license to drive a school bus, there is a database that is surgical and you can determine whether or not someone has lost their license before we put them behind the wheel of a bus carrying our kids. What do you think about that . I dont know that i want to make it a federal law. Hes over time so i wish that you would take those suggestions under advisement. I thank the chairman for her indulgence. I yield back. And i thank mr. Palmer for his comments, especially this notion about ways to make the penalties more severe for passing by a school bus. Thats something that we need to look into, raising a federal issue as to whether or not we could do that, recognizing that most of these laws are local and mr. Palmer raised a number of issues. I think this was raised before, about studies that we need to do, statistics we simply do not have. It seems to me we cannot pass another bill without making sure that those studies are not and statistics are not mandated. So i thank you, mr. Palmer. Mr. Cohen. Thank you, madam chair. First id like to address my question to ms. Fulton. Thank you for the good work youve done in new jersey, yall seem to have been way ahead of the game. Youve done super. Why has new jersey been able to make significant progress toward improving School Bus Safety, the threepoint safety belts, when its been so difficult in other states . Well, congressman, i will be honest with you, it makes a difference when the governor and the members of our new jersey congressional delegation make it a priority, continue to work actively educating the community, speaking out about it and speaking to our state legislators. We have had incredible support across the board from members of congress and the governor to say who is your governor . Governor phil murphy. And this has been something that was important to him and important to our members of congress and they made it happen. Listen, no one wants to wait for a tragedy, but when it happens, you know, thats an opportunity where people in a position to make a difference can choose to really were you part of the campaign to make it happen, the lobbying effort . I was not. I dont lobby for legislation in my position as Motor Vehicle commissioner. We provided as an observer do you recall who were the main people against the bills . Against the bill . Yeah. Was it there wasnt significant opposition. You know, there were questions about the additional cost, but the additional cost of a couple thousand on a 54passenger bus. There was cost for School Districts but there was a lot of support from the School Districts where they have had accidents to go forward with it. Thank you, maam. Ms. Poland, let me ask you as part of a special report examining School Bus Safety the ntsb recommended that all new large school buses be equipped with lap and shoulder belts. You probably remember that from my Opening Statement. Im sure everybody does. In addition the American Academy of pediatrics long standing position that new school buses should be equipped with seat belts. Why is it so important that this common sense Safety Equipment that has already saved thousands of lives in passenger Motor Vehicles be placed in all large school buses . As i mentioned in my Opening Statement, we know that school buses are extremely safe, but they are vulnerable in certain types of crashes and over and over again were seeing children that are injured and killed in these types of very severe crashes. The technologies have changed over time. We initially recommended occupant protection systems, but now were seeing that lap shoulder belts are well designed and