State of Bus Safety in the U.S.: Summary of Federal and State Regulations

This report provides a comprehensive overview of transit bus safety regulations and standards developed by all 50 states, as well as information on how state departments of transportation (DOT) regulate the maintenance or operation of transit/paratransit vehicles operated by public transit agencies. For quick reference, this document is accompanied by a spreadsheet containing basic information on state DOT regulation of transit bus safety, state requirements for annual transit bus inspections, and a list of laws/regulations with hyperlinks to each statutory reference. The spreadsheet and map with hyperlinks are available at www.transitsafetycenter.org. Since many of the state laws contain references to federal regulations, this report begins with a summary of federal laws and regulations.