Do We Have a Carrier, Driver, or Regulatory Issue, or a Combination of All Three?

How America's largest intercity bus company maintains federal approval despite a troubling safety record and questionable oversight

In the past 24 months, Greyhound Lines has been involved in 5 fatal crashes, 40 injury crashes, and 39 crashes requiring vehicle towing, totaling 84 reported incidents. Yet, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) maintains Greyhound's "Satisfactory" safety rating, last updated in June 2023, following a review in September 2024.

The most recent fatal incident occurred this past Memorial Day in Tennessee, when a Greyhound bus traveling from Memphis to Nashville collided with a pickup truck on Highway 70 in Madison County, killing passenger Glen Young Jr., 60, of Colorado, and truck driver John Davis, 56, of Tennessee. What makes this crash particularly concerning? The bus driver was a 30-year-old substitute driver from Mississippi.

This pattern of using substitute drivers raises serious questions about training consistency and oversight, which become more urgent when viewed alongside Greyhound's troubling recent history.

History of Failure

The Tennessee crash wasn't an isolated incident. On July 12, 2023, a fatigued Greyhound driver crashed into three parked tractor-trailers on an Interstate 70 exit ramp in Illinois, killing three passengers and injuring 14 others. The National Transportation Safety Board's investigation revealed details about both the driver and company oversight.

The Illinois crash driver had been on duty for more than 12 hours, was driving at unsafe speeds, and had a history of crashes dating back to 2018, including a prior preventable crash where he rear-ended a tractor-trailer while fatigued, injuring eight people. Even more troubling, the driver had been disciplined more than a dozen times for various violations, including 11 instances of speeding. (Coaching and training and even write-ups are great, but when you've trained someone 11 times on the same issues and they're ongoing issues, accountability has to come King at some point.)

The NTSB concluded that Greyhound failed to "mitigate the driver's recurring unsafe driving behaviors" and cited the company for inadequate oversight. Yet somehow, this driver remained behind the wheel of a bus carrying passengers.

The Safety Rating Shell Game

How does a company with such a record maintain a "Satisfactory" rating? The answer lies in understanding how the FMCSA's rating system actually works…and doesn't work.

A "Satisfactory" rating simply means "the carrier received an on-site investigation indicating that safety controls are sufficient to ensure compliance with the safety fitness standard." It's a bureaucratic box-checking exercise, not a real-world safety assessment. With the right sample size and sample selection, even the worst carriers can walk away with a clean bill of health. A Sat rating means you have the systems in place, and we reviewed the ideal set of driver and vehicle files.

Studies have shown that for many audit items, correlation coefficients between audit item outcomes and actual safety performance have counter-intuitive signs: the better the compliance rating of firms, the worse their accident rates. The rating system measures paperwork compliance, not actual road safety.

Meanwhile, the Safety Measurement System (SMS) can flag carriers for intervention even when they have "Satisfactory" ratings, and a carrier can maintain its satisfactory rating while exceeding SMS intervention thresholds. This creates a dangerous disconnect between official ratings and real safety concerns.

Following the Money

Despite its safety issues, Greyhound continues to receive significant government support. Some Greyhound Connect routes are operated using funds from the Federal Transit Administration's "Federal Formula Grant Program for Rural Areas," with states required to spend at least 15% of their annual rural transit apportionment on intercity bus transportation unless they can prove the need is already being met.

Many state governments simply turn over their federal 5311(f) funds to longtime operators like Greyhound to continue running routes without regard to performance, essentially providing corporate welfare with little accountability. These grants cover 50% of route losses after ticket revenues, with the remainder requiring local matches.

The irony is that taxpayers are subsidizing a company that federal investigators claim fails to monitor dangerous drivers.

Industry Awards While Lives Are Lost

Even as fatal crashes mount, Greyhound continues collecting industry recognition. In 2025, Greyhound was named among the top 10 bus services in the USA TODAY 10Best Readers' Choice Awards, with the American Bus Association celebrating this "clean sweep" by ABA members. In 2024, both FlixBus and Greyhound were voted among the top ten Best Bus Services, with Greyhound receiving recognition for "modern amenities" including Wi-Fi and power outlets. Has anyone in these award groups ever been on a Greyhound Bus, or maybe to the Richmond, VA Greyhound station? I rode one from Richmond for this article some time ago, and I was scared to sit down out of fear of getting a communicable disease. Homeless people were bathing in the sinks and trash ran over into the floor. (The reviews are gold at the link)

Greyhound's own website boasts: "For more than ten years, we've received the highest possible safety rating from the Department of Transportation after every compliance check." This messaging creates a dangerous illusion of safety while the reality on the road tells a different story.

The Driver Crisis and Shortcuts

The root of many problems isn’t actually an industry-wide driver shortage that's forcing companies to make dangerous compromises. That's right… There is no general driver shortage. That narrative is actually covered in Day 2 of the 30 Days of Why, which breaks down why and how that narrative eliminated barriers to the industry, which actually created this issue. According to the Chaddick Institute's 2023 outlook, bus companies estimate they are short 7,300 drivers, with more than 20% of driver jobs unfilled due to wage rates, licensing delays, and lack of interest in driving. So what they're saying is that there is no shortage of drivers; there's a shortage of drivers who want to work for free, finding no value or meaning in their career, and who want no work-life balance. (I fixed the wording for them.) The Intercity Bus Industry also funded this report, so it did not receive any support from bus companies.

Who funds the intercity bus industry? Yep, you guessed it, Greyhound, other major bus carriers, and the FTA.

This combination of non-shortage, zero work-life balance, and low pay issues are the actual issues and creates a dangerous situation for bus passengers, meaning Greyhound and other bus companies will likely hire more unqualified drivers to fill the void. The Tennessee crash's substitute driver fits this concerning pattern.

Despite Greyhound's claims that drivers must perform thorough inspections every 150 miles, a CNN investigation found that these "maintenance stops" rarely occur. The company is also "using old buses while facing a shortage of mechanics to work on them, meaning tire blowouts and more serious mechanical problems are likely to be encountered with a bus full of passengers."

The Fatigue Factor

Driver fatigue emerges as a recurring theme in Greyhound's fatal crashes. Legal experts note that Greyhound is "well aware" that drivers operating between midnight and 6 a.m. are substantially more likely to cause fatigue-related crashes, and the company even retained a fatigue consultant, Alertness Solutions, in 2010.

Yet fatigue-related crashes keep happening. In 2022, multiple crashes on Highway 99 in California showed "tell-tale signs of a fatigued bus driver," including drivers with "inverted sleep schedules and extended hours of driving time."

Systemic Problems

While driver qualifications and fatigue are major factors, the problems run deeper. Federal records from 2021 to 2023 show 69 reported crashes involving Greyhound buses, more than two per month, with regulators flagging Greyhound for violations in hours-of-service compliance, scoring 51 on a 0-100 scale, where zero is ideal. Greyhound, as of the time of this publication, is in alert status in two categories with the FMCSA, meaning they exceed safety thresholds in both hours of service and driver fitness. Additionally, their vehicle out-of-service rate is 23.1%, which is four times the national average, indicating that they also have issues with their Maintenance BASIC.

Somehow, they remain a Satisfactory-rated, safety-recognized, and awarded carrier. Greyhound is a priority for intervention actions and roadside inspections. This is the very problem creating the highways we drive on.

The substitute driver model raises questions about consistency in training. Greyhound's training program requires six weeks of preparation, including computer courses, two weeks of hands-on driving school, and three weeks of mentoring, with over 120 hours behind the wheel. How does a substitute driver from Mississippi end up operating a route between Tennessee cities? Are there shortcuts being taken in driver deployment?

All drivers must have a CDL license with a passenger endorsement, pass DOT physicals and drug screenings, and meet strict requirements, including meeting passport eligibility requirements for Canadian routes. However, the gap between policy and practice is significant, indicating a systemic management issue, rather than a bottom-up issue.

System of Accountability

The Greyhound safety paradox illustrates broader problems with how America regulates commercial transportation. A company can:

• Accumulate 84 crashes in 24 months, including 5 fatalities

• Have drivers with documented histories of preventable crashes continue operating

• Receive government subsidies while failing basic oversight responsibilities

• Collect industry safety awards while federal investigators cite "inadequate oversight"

• Maintain "Satisfactory" ratings while being flagged for intervention

Greyhound claims to have received "the highest possible safety rating from the Department of Transportation after every compliance check" for over a decade. Yet they score 51 out of 100 on federal compliance measures, putting them above intervention thresholds.

It’s not a lie; the FMCSA has scored it as having the highest possible rating from the DOT. Perspective is everything.

The Real Cost

Behind these statistics are real victims. Glen Young Jr. was traveling from Colorado when he died in the Tennessee crash. Three passengers died in the Illinois crash when their bus was sheared apart. Multiple crashes in California injured dozens more passengers, many of them children.

As NTSB Chairman Jennifer Homendy said about the Illinois crash: "This crash was as tragic as it was preventable." The same could be said about a regulatory system that allows such patterns to continue.

What Needs to Change

The Greyhound case reveals the need for fundamental reforms:

Immediate Actions:

• Real-time monitoring of driver performance, not just paperwork compliance

• Stricter oversight of substitute and relief drivers

• Genuine consequences for companies with patterns of preventable crashes

• Public reporting that connects safety ratings to actual crash records

Systemic Changes:

• Reform safety rating criteria to include crash patterns and driver oversight failures

• Tie government subsidies to genuine safety performance, not bureaucratic compliance

• Require independent safety audits for companies receiving public funds

• Create transparency between taxpayer support and safety outcomes

American taxpayers shouldn't subsidize unsafe transportation. Passengers shouldn't have to decipher the difference between marketing claims and safety reality. And federal regulators shouldn't allow a company to collect safety awards while accumulating preventable fatalities.

With 69 crashes in two years and a pattern of failing to address dangerous driver behaviors, Greyhound's "Satisfactory" rating represents a failure of the rating system, not a satisfactory level of safety. 5 fatalities and maybe more NTSB investigations than any other fleet on the globe should not equate to the word Satisfactory. As long as this is the case, fleets like these, celebrating their satisfactory “success,” have no reason to change their behavior.

Until this disconnect is addressed, more Glen Young Jr.s will pay the ultimate price for a system that prioritizes paperwork over passengers.