N.C. Car Accident Kills Va. Teacher, Her Mother

A popular Arlington elementary school teacher and her 83-year-old mother were killed Wednesday when their car was hit by a truck in Fairview, N.C.

Leola Anne Purser, 52, a preschool teacher at Barrett Elementary School, died immediately when a delivery truck ran a red light and crashed into the driver's side of the Oldsmobile she was driving, according to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. Her mother, Vera Huntley Purser of Charlotte, died a few hours later at a hospital.

Leola Purser, a native of Charlotte, had taught at Barrett for a decade. At last Thursday's faculty meeting, she received a 10-year pin to mark the occasion.

She started there as a teaching assistant after having worked as a caterer. Theresa D. Bratt, the school principal, said Purser threw herself into her new career, teaching and waiting on tables while attending college to earn a degree in early childhood education.

"She worked very hard to get to where she got to," Bratt said, adding that Purser also was a sponsor for Project Y.E.S., a service club for fourth- and fifth-graders.

"She really knew each of the children as individuals and focused on what made them exceptional," Bratt said.

At the school, which is on spring break this week, secretary Nellie Vargas grappled yesterday with the fact that her longtime friend was gone. "I'm just still not accepting it," she said. "I've been crying all day."

Vargas, who used to teach computer classes alongside Purser, said the two often went out shopping, dining or salsa dancing. Purser had an infectious sense of humor and an ability to empathize, she said.

"In my personal struggle of life, she was there for me," Vargas said. "When I lost my brother at 41, she was there for me. I don't know what I'm going to do now, because I don't know who to face in dealing with this grief."

Mary Beth Pelosky, a longtime friend of Purser's, said: "She was really coming into her own. She had had a tremendous run of positive things in her life since she started teaching."

She said Purser traveled to Mexico two years ago to improve her Spanish so she could communicate better with students.

When school reopens Monday, Bratt will hold an assembly to tell teachers and students about the accident, and crisis counselors will be available.

Purser had been spending spring break in North Carolina with her mother, and they were on their way to visit relatives when the accident occurred.

She is survived by three brothers and a son, Caleb, a graduate of Yorktown High School and George Mason University.

The driver of the truck, Tory Jermaine Stripling, 27, of Concord, N.C., was not injured, authorities said. He has been charged with two counts of misdemeanor death by vehicle.

Washington Post; March 25, 2005

No watchdog For Truckers

Relatives' deaths prompt inquiry that shows failures by FMCSA

From Michael Purser of Atlanta, whose mother and sister were killed March 23, 2005, while visiting relatives in Union County:

Three years ago I knew nothing about the trucking industry and the federal agency responsible for its oversight. What I've learned since then, after my mother and only sister were killed near Charlotte when a commercial truck rammed their car, is no less than terrifying.

When Congress established the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in 1999, it gave the agency dominion over large commercial carriers and charged it with one primary goal: reduce the more than 5,000 fatalities occurring every year from crashes with these trucks. FMCSA's oversight was intended to make the carriers more responsible and accountable. Unfortunately, its performance has fallen woefully short.

FMCSA's primary enforcement tools are SafeStat, a data-driven analysis system, and the Compliance Review, an evaluation of a carrier's training, safety inspections, record keeping, hiring practices, crash data and other relevant material. FMCSA Administrator John Hill has characterized this combination as a "reliable tool" for enforcement. My experience suggests otherwise.

A year after my mother and sister's crash, their deaths still weren't listed in the FMCSA data base, so I initiated a CR. It showed the carrier had been operating with a "conditional" rating for 10 years with no review by FMCSA. It also revealed:

• – Minimum random drug testing of drivers was not being done in a timely manner.
• – Repeated incidents where the company failed to conduct post-accident drug and alcohol testing after wrecks involving their trucks.
• – The company put drivers on the road before obtaining pre-employment drug test results.
• – A fatality in New Jersey where the carrier's driver was convicted of drug use.

The carrier, with over $1.4 billion in gross revenues, was fined a total of $3,040. FMCSA found no pattern in the carrier's behavior and upgraded its status from "conditional" to "satisfactory."

FMCSA will tell you any commercial carrier crash resulting in a death will initiate a CR. Yet none of the four fatalities attributed to this carrier in a 20-month period -- three of them in North Carolina -- resulted in a Compliance Review.

FMCSA will tell you that all fatalities become part of their crash data in a timely manner. The reality is to get my mother and sister's deaths into the FMCSA data base took two and half years, two letters to the FMCSA director, two face-to-face meetings with regional FMCSA officials, letters to four U.S. senators and six House members, several discussions with the N.C. Highway Patrol and a visit to the Capitol Hill offices of one U.S. senator and five U.S. representatives.

FMCSA will tell you they're motivating carriers to safer practices. The reality is that we never found any evidence of professional driver training for more than 2,000 delivery truck drivers or their managers with the carrier in our case. We did find that the company had paid approximately $2 million to a well-known NASCAR driver to train the two sons of a top executive to drive a race car with the company's logo on it.

FMCSA's legacy of failure is well known to members of Congress. Every report, government or private, has listed its shortcomings. The number of annual fatalities remains well over 5,000. FMCSA is incapable of providing meaningful oversight of hundreds of thousands of U.S. carriers. I would argue that the consequence of poor oversight and enforcement by FMCSA actually enables high risk carriers. There is little down side to putting the public at risk.

I expect those who are responsible for oversight of an industry to have the authority and the means for doing just that. Congress and FMCSA have said they would cover our backs as we use the highways we built with our tax dollars. It is time they kept that promise.

The Charlotte Observer; April 2, 2008

Technology and the Tired Trucker: Why the Trucking Industry Resists Onboard Recorders

In April 2004, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer owned by Swift Transportation ran a stop sign at a highway intersection near Hutchinson, Kan., and slammed into a Chevy Suburban, killing a Wichita businessman. The man's family sued, claiming that the driver had been fatigued.

Swift, which relied on its drivers to keep paper logbooks to record their hours, couldn't produce the documentation. It lost the case. In December, the courts imposed a $36.5 million judgment against the company.

Technologies that could have preserved those records and possibly prevented the accident have existed for years. But three of the four largest for-hire trucking firms don't use them, nor do most other large interstate trucking companies -- yet.

A fully loaded 18-wheeler can weigh 80,000 pounds, so it's no surprise that accidents often result in fatalities -- nearly 5,000 in 2006 alone. "Many of the deaths are related to tired drivers," says Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen and a former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Drivers are required to keep logs to prove that they are following federal hours-of-service rules that stipulate how many hours they can work per day and the maximum hours of continuous driving allowed. Some drivers break those rules and manipulate paper logbooks to cover their tracks. Claybrook asserts that the practice is widespread.

Electronic driver logs, also known as electronic onboard recorders (EOBR), do away with paper logbooks. The devices typically include a screen and a keyboard where the driver can input activity. That data is matched to a GPS device and vehicle sensors that continuously monitor the vehicle's location and operation and can transmit that data back to the carrier's operations center.

"It's impossible to fudge the numbers. You can't claim you're resting when the truck is moving," says Donald Broughton, a transportation industry analyst at investment banking firm Avondale Partners.

But carriers make money by delivering the maximum number of loads in the minimum time. Enforcing hours-of-service rules more tightly could reduce per-truck revenues -- and profitability -- if drivers are breaking the rules. Some drivers complain that with the current per-mile compensation levels, they can't make a living without bending the rules. Adopting EOBRs not only might reduce revenue per truck, but also could require an increase in driver compensation.

But one carrier adopted electronic driver logs and other safety- and performance-related technologies long ago -- and now uses those technologies to competitive advantage. Broughton calls Omaha-based Werner Enterprises "best in class" for its use of information and communications technologies to reduce costs and improve profitability. The for-hire operator is able to more efficiently schedule its fleet because it can better track the number of hours its drivers are available. "Only a few companies can run as many miles and generate as much revenue per truck as Werner does," Broughton says.

Requiring EOBRs would force carriers to move forward in lock step, achieving safety goals without putting any carrier at a competitive disadvantage, says Kay Palmer, CIO at carrier J.B. Hunt Transport Services, which is testing EOBRs. That may be the direction the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is heading.

"Electronic recorders have enough political pressure that they will probably be mandated," says Jim Tipka, vice president of engineering at the industry trade group American Trucking Associations.

If EOBRs are required, for-hire carrier fleets may find themselves playing catch-up with Werner. That could give this early mover an edge as its competitors adapt their own business models to a world where drivers can't improve productivity by running illegal hours anymore.

Computerworld; Robert L. Mitchell, March 17, 2008

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