Early Sunday morning, on Highway 90 in Texas, four members of a family were killed in a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler. Authorities believe the driver of the truck was drunk, and they have charged him with intoxication manslaughter in four counts.

Only one member of the family, a teenage son, survived the accident. The family had been returning to their home in Brackettville after attending an event in San Antonio.

South Texas certainly has its share of those. Each of them is terrible - in lives cut short and in the impact on the survivors.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving - San Antonio seeks to remember the victims and comfort their families by creating story boards that show the lives of those who were killed. Families assist in making these mementos. It is therapeutic work that seeks to heal the deep emotional wounds opened up senseless drunk driving accidents.

Melissa Montgomery, the manager of victim services for MADD - San Antonio, thinks that a cultural shift is necessary to fully change attitudes toward drinking and driving. To be sure, a criminal justice response is called for in intoxication manslaughter cases. But society itself must also more fully recognize the dangers of drunk driving.

Source: "SAPD: Four family members killed in wrong-way crash with DWI suspect," KENS, 4-15-13

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Last week, there was a fatal bus accident near Dallas. A bus carrying passengers back from a trip to casino in Oklahoma crashed and rolled in a one-vehicle accident. Two people were killed. Numerous others were treated at local hospitals for injuries sustained in the crash.

Texas is not the only state to experience tour bus crashes in recent months. Only a few days ago, a tour bus crash near Yosemite National Park injured 16 people. Last December, nine people were killed in Oregon when a charter bus went off a mountain road.

Two years ago, in the most high-profile bus accident in recent years, 15 people died in a bus crash in New York City. Like last week's bus accident in Texas, the New York accident involved a tour bus returning from a casino.

An investigation showed that the driver in the New York bus accident had a problematic driving record. The loss of so many lives prompted various proposals to improve bus safety. These proposals included such things as requiring seat belts on buses and improving federal monitoring of bus driver safety records.

Significant changes, however, have not really occurred. And that is a significant concern for all who care about highway safety.

Source: "Driver in charter bus wreck also involved in fatal accident in 1998," Dallas Morning News, Matthew Watkins, Ray Lescynski and Avi Shelk, 4-11-13

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Regardless of the exact name, the trend toward using these devices is expected to continue. For one thing, under a law called Map-21 passed by Congress last year, federal safety regulators are required to issue an industry-wide rule mandating the use of electronic trucking logs in Texas and across the country. MAP-21 stands for Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21^st Century.

At a meeting last month of a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, trucking industry officials expressed their concerns about a mandatory elog rule that might be too rigid. There is wide agreement that electronic logs will make recordkeeping more accurate. This will make it easier to detect hours-of-service violations, in which truckers stay on the road longer than the rules allow.

Trucking industry groups argue that there should be a "fudge factor" allowed by the rules. Such a fudge factor, they say, would enable truckers who are nearly home to continue on the road, even if they have reached their hours-of-service limits.

Obviously that reasoning has flaws. After all, a fatigued trucker who has been on the road too long can still cause an accident, even if he or she is close to home.

Even without a mandatory rule in place, many trucking companies are proactively transitioning to electronic logs. Such logs can actually save truckers money because it takes less time to complete them than paper logs.

Source: "Feds address coercion, pressure on truckers to violate regs," Landline, David Tanner, 3-15-13

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In Texas and across and across the country, carriers are getting the message. Many of them aren't waiting for an expected federal mandate to require electronic logs for all commercial trucks. Instead, they are making the switch voluntarily.

Significantly, this increase in the use of elogs has also helped carriers increase their safety scores on the relevant federal index. In terms of federal truck regulations, those scores are known as CSA scores. CSA stands for compliance, safety and accountability. The purpose of assigning these scores is to encourage carriers to take steps necessary to prevent truck accidents.

Elogs are also sometimes called electronic onboard recorders (EOBRs). Attempts by federal safety regulators to require EOBRs have met with considerable resistance from trucking industry groups. But Congress passed a law last June that requires the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to issue a rule that would make electronic logs mandatory.

Source: "Sudden shift toward electronic log usage," Fleet Owner, Brian Straight, 4-1-13

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