Sky Express bus company suspended after crash

An accident involving a Sky Express bus traveling overnight from Greensboro, N.C., to New York’s Chinatown on Tuesday morning killed four passengers and injured dozens of others after the driver veered off Interstate 95 and the bus rolled over. The accident occurred in Caroline County, about 30 miles north of Richmond. The authorities said driver fatigue played a role in the crash, and the driver, Kin Yiu Cheung, 37, of Queens, was arrested and charged with reckless driving. He suffered minor injuries.

The decision to suspend Sky Express came after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which oversees bus safety, issued the company an unsatisfactory safety rating after conducting a compliance review. The agency, which is part of the federal Department of Transportation, said it had found multiple violations in Sky Express’s driver qualification requirements, its drug and alcohol compliance measures, its hours of operation and its vehicle maintenance.

“Safety is our No.1 priority,” Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, said in a statement. “We will use every resource at our disposal to pursue and remove from our roads unsafe, reckless bus companies.” Sky Express, which did not return a phone call Wednesday, has had a poor safety record during the past two years, according to the Department of Transportation. The carrier has been cited 46 times by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration since May 2009 for using fatigued drivers. It has also had four crashes.

Tuesday’s accident was atleast the third fatal crash involving one of the many discount tour bus companies that use Chinatown as a hub. In March, a World Wide Tours bus driver returning to Chinatown from a Connecticut casino swerved off Interstate 95 in the Bronx, slicing the bus in half and killing 15 people. Two days later, a Super Luxury Tours bus headed from Chinatown to Philadelphia crashed on the New Jersey Turnpike, killing two people, including the driver.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said Wednesday that it had responded to the accident by increasing enforcement, including conducting more that 3,000 surprise inspections of passenger buses during the the first two weeks of May, which led to the suspensions of 127 drivers and 315 unsafe buses being taken out of service. In New York, lawmakers have called for stricter regulations of the tour bus industry, including requiring carriers to apply to the city for permits in addition to the operating licenses they are required to obtain from the federal government.