Honing in on Highway Safety

A fiery tractor trailer crash on I-40 claimed three lives earlier this month and the trucking company involved had numerous safety violations. The accident was one of the latest in a recent rash of deadly highway crashes involving big rigs. Other major accidents in recent months involved budget bus lines that also that have long lists of citations for, among other things, driver fatigue.

Host Frank Stasio talks about the government crackdown on budget buses and the trucking industry with Jim O'Grady, a reporter for New York Public Radio-WNYC and a contributor to Transportation Nation, and Charlie Gray, owner of the Carolina Trucking Academy in Raleigh. University of North Carolina baseball coach Mike Fox also joins the program to remember Lorenzo Charles, who became a college basketball legend at North Carolina State University with his championship-clinching dunk in 1983. His career in more recent years was as a bus driver for sports teams like Fox’s. Charles died on June 28th when the bus he was driving veered off I-40.