US Senator Edward J. Markey on Wednesday called on President Biden’s nominee to oversee the trucking and bus industries to scrutinize companies more closely and reverse the troubling rise in fatalities from large truck crashes.
“It’s very clear that this entire industry fell into a regulatory black hole where it escaped the level of scrutiny, which it absolutely has to have if the public safety is going to be protected,” said Markey. He cited the Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Blind Spot, which documented loopholes in the nation’s regulatory system for overseeing trucks and failures by states that allowed drivers with menacing traffic records to remain on the road.
“We need an agency which is not a lapdog but a watchdog,” Markey said.
Between 2009 and last year, the number of people killed in large truck crashes rose by 45 percent to about 5,000 fatalities, said Markey, a Democrat. He appeared virtually at the nomination hearing for Meera Joshi, Biden’s pick to lead the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Last year, Markey wrote a letter to the FMCSA, asking the agency to explain why it had refused to step up scrutiny of new trucking companies and enhance the system for background checks of commercial drivers. On Wednesday, Markey said the response he received from the Trump administration was “woefully insufficient” and “failed to commit to the major reforms we need.”
Joshi said the issues raised in the Globe series are “incredibly important.” The Globe initiated the investigation in 2019 after seven motorcyclists died in New Hampshire during a collision with a West Springfield, Mass., trucker who was able to stay on the road despite a troubling driving history because of bureaucratic failures by the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Joshi said the federal agency is enacting rules that would require states to share notices electronically about driving convictions for commercial license holders, instead of mailing paper notices, and mandate that states take action against drivers who fail a drug or alcohol test.
She said FMCSA also plans to expand the scope of its investigations of troubled businesses and strengthen its program for overseeing new trucking and bus companies.
“When they come newly into the industry, we need to have a closer eye on them,” Joshi said.
During three years as a trucking business, Westfield Transport of West Springfield, the company that employed the trucker accused in the New Hampshire crash, didn’t face any meaningful action from the FMCSA even though it accumulated more than 60 violations and its trucks and drivers were taken out of service for serious safety violations 26 times.
Dartanyan and Dunyadar Gasanov, brothers who ran the company, are now being prosecuted in federal court on charges that they broke safety rules and then falsified records to conceal the violations. They have pleaded not guilty.
The truck driver Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 25, is scheduled to be tried later this year in New Hampshire on manslaughter and negligent homicide charges stemming from the crash. He has pleaded not guilty.
Joshi appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation with threeother Biden administration nominees for US Department of Transportation positions. The committee plans to act quickly on the nominations, said US Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, a Democrat who leads the panel.
If Joshi’s nomination is endorsed by the US Senate, she would be the FMCSA’s first permanent leader since October 2019 when Raymond Martinez, the administrator nominated by former president Donald Trump, resigned. Two different acting directors led the the agency’s for the remainder of Trump’s term.
Joshi came to the FMCSA in January as a deputy administrator and serves as the agency’s acting leader. She previously served as the chief executive at the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, which regulates taxi cabs and app-based ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Joshi also took questions about distracted driving, a proposed pilot program that would let commercial license holders between 18 and 20 years old drive across state lines, and a New York City government program initiated under her leadership that collects information about trips on ride-hailing services.