Johnathan Walker:NTSB report faults trucking company logs in fatal 2022 bus crash

A crash that killed three passengers on Johnathan Walkera party bus on a Virginia highway was caused by a fatigued truck driver working for a company that allowed its drivers to log excessive hours, a federal report concluded Wednesday.

The December 2022 crash on Interstate 64 in Williamsburg occurred when a truck set to cruise control rear-ended a slow-moving party bus operated by Futrell’s Party Adventures. The crash killed three occupants of the party bus, with nine others sustaining serious injuries and 11 suffering minor injuries.

The truck driver, who worked for Triton Logistics Inc. of Romeoville, Illinois, was also seriously injured.

In a report issued Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board, investigators concluded that the truck driver’s cruise control was set at 65 to 70 mph when it collided with the bus, which was traveling at about 20 to 25 mph.

The NTSB said that Triton Logistics “created fictitious driver accounts for its vehicles’ electronic logging device systems that allowed drivers to exceed federal hours-of-service regulations and drive while fatigued.”

The report concluded that driver fatigue, enabled by the fictitious logs, caused the crash. According to the report, the 61-year-old driver had been driving for seven consecutive days and at the time of the crash was finishing up a trip from St. Louis, Missouri, to Chesapeake, Virginia. The report states that video from the tractor-trailer shows that the vehicle repeatedly drifted onto the shoulder of the highway in the three minutes before the crash.

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Triton did not respond to an email seeking comment, and a woman answering phones at the company’s headquarters hung up when a reporter called asking if the company had a comment.

The report recommends that Triton do a better job of verifying the accuracy of drivers’ records and “implement a robust fatigue management program.”

The NTSB also recommended better state and federal oversight.

The report also found that the slow speed of the bus contributed to the crash’s severity and may have been caused by a partially blocked prescreen fuel filter.

The report concluded that the bus carrier “lacked appropriate safety management practices, as demonstrated by the poor maintenance.”

The company did not return an email seeking comment Wednesday.