Texas governor upholds his waiver to allow the use of bus that burned up

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/12741056.htm

Texas governor upholds decision to allow expired registration on bus that later burned

DALLAS - (KRT) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry defended his decision Sunday to sign a waiver allowing a bus with expired registration to transport elderly residents fleeing Hurricane Rita from the Houston area to Dallas.

Twenty-four people died early Friday morning near Wilmer, Texas, when a fire spread from the bus' brakes into the cabin, where it touched off several oxygen tanks. It was the worst bus accident in Texas since 1952.

Sunday morning on "Meet The Press" and later on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," Perry said the exceptions he granted for motor carriers did not put people in danger.

Tim Russert, host of "Meet The Press," cited a Dallas Morning News story that revealed the doomed bus' registration had been expired since July.

"You signed a waiver to allow buses like that to go back on the road for the evacuation. Any regrets?" Russert asked.

[Catherine Vincent]

1. The families of the dead will want someone to take the responsibility

of this tragedy. If it's Governor Perry, so be it.

[LiberalinNC]

2. Isn't this time to say "maybe we need to make some changes!"

Quote from Perry "Well, we didn't sign any waivers to allow for any safety standards to be overseen, so the fact of the matter is we were trying to get as many people out of harm's way as we could," Perry responded. "And that type of registration didn't have anything to do with the safety standards that are required. So if we had to all do it again, (we'd) probably do the same thing because it's important to get people out of harm's way."


Idiot!

[Horse with no Name]

3. You don't get people out of harm's way by putting them

in another unsafe place.
Total insanity.

[acmejack]

4. In Texas, registration and safety inspection are separate issues!

Expired registration is about license plates, state vehicle fees, while the inspection sticker is a yearly safety inspection not ties to the former.

[Horse with no Name]

5. I live in Texas

and am painfully aware that the REASON many of these buses are not registered is BECAUSE they can't pass inspection due to safety issues.
There was a huge write up regarding this in the Dallas Morning News a few years ago. There are hundreds of unsafe buses on the road and that is how they get them off the road.
In this case..only to be put back ON THE ROAD by Gov. Goodhair.

[Greyhound]

7. Thanks to NAFTA (one of Clinton's "accomplishments"), safety inspections

are useless in the border states. You should see the rattling death traps running up and down the 710 every day, all with mexican registration.

[Tempest]

11. Safety inspections were still required up until this year

The Bush administration has only just recently instituted provision doing away with safety inspections.

Clinton signed NAFTA with the understanding Congress would revisit the safety inspection waiver. Clinton did not want the inspections waived.

[Greyhound]

17. And yet he signed it anyway. Of course he knew that government always

keeps its promises. That is just the same kind of crap that let the repukes take over. Of course, they're just as bad, if not worse.
Dems, please, please, please, give us a real alternative! It is all we want. Just a fair break.
<edit> BTW the Mexican trucks (with no safety inspections, or even safety standards) started rolling through Long Beach within weeks of NAFTA being ratified.

[Tempest]

8. You are dead wrong

Before you register your vehicle in Texas, it must pass a vehicle safety inspection and vehicle identification number inspection made by a state appointed safety inspection station.

http://aig.home.texas.net/register.html

[Igel]

14. But once it's registered, there's only

a loose connection.

I renewed my registration in mid-July, but only got the car inspected in late August. If you let the inspection period lapse and don't drive the vehicle, they don't void your registration.

The inspection and registration dates can drift apart; mine have, and it's only been a year.

It's likely that the bus's inspection sticker was expired, but it's not a solid conclusion.

[Pithlet]

6. If registration and safety inspection are separate in Texas

Then I don't have a problem with what the Governer did. I don't know enough about Texas motor vehicle laws to have an educated opinion about this. Some states and local governments tie the two together, others don't. If Texas is one that doesn't, then expired tags don't necessarily mean anything when it comes to vehicle safety, and the Governor wasn't taking unnecessary risks, only removing a bureaucratic barrier in time of need.

[Horse with no Name]

9. Please see post 5

It's not that simple.

[Pithlet]

13. Then it appears that Texas does tie them together

If registration can be denied because of failed safety inspection, then the two aren't separate, and the Governer should not have done so. Not all states handle things the same way, so I wasn't sure if the governor's decision was the right one. If registration were not dependant on a passed safety inspection, then I would think it was the right thing to do.

[snooper2]

10. And...

If buses with experied inspections where not allowed to be used by perfect hair man, and people had died in a flood as a direct result, what would the response be?

Being devils advocate...

[Horse with no Name]

12. I don't think there would have been an argument

IF he was going to put these buses back in commission...there should have been a safety inspection of each one.
You can't take a bus off the road because it can't pass a safety inspection only to use it in an emergency, thus creating another emergency.
It doesn't make any sense. There were plenty of legally operating buses in Texas to use until they could inspect the others.
If that had been a busload of children...I have a feeling people would be looking at this in the same harsh light that I see it in.

[ucmike]

15. hard to bash him for that

he was doing what he thought was reasonable. perfectly legal buses catch fire every day, it just happened that the bus in question happened to catch fire in the middle of one of the most intense media circuses of all time.

if a bus had caught fire on a non-hurricane friday afternoon it would have got some mention on the traffic reports and disappeared from the media landscape.

i know from experience that inspected vehicles catch fire too.

[NNN0LHI]

16. Good thing a Democratic governor didn't sign this waiver

He/she would be in jail by now.

Don