SAN FRANCISCO Federal transportation safety officials are looking to high-tech equipment to help keep motorcoach travel the safest mode of transportation in the United States

And they suggest motorcoach operators do the same.

That was the word from National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark Rosenker and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Deputy Administrator Dave Hugel who called on operators to give serious consideration to the array of electronic equipment now on the market that can help prevent accidents.

The two delivered their recommendations in speeches last month on the opening day of the UMA Motorcoach Expo here.

"It costs a little more but what you get is a payback a million times over," said Rosenker, pointing to such equipment as collision warning systems, electronic stability controls and rollover stability devices.

He said the NTSB, which investigates transportation accidents and makes safety recommendations to federal regulators, feels so strongly about technology playing a major role in highway safety that it recently added the use of high-tech equipment to its "most wanted" list.

Hugel agreed on the importance of using high-tech equipment on motorcoaches and urged operators attending Expo to spend time on the convention floor examining some of the equipment that vendors were featuring.

"I join with Chairman Rosenker and urge you to look at it and see what we can do to improve this already safe industry," Hugel said.

Rosenker, who became NTSB chairman in 2006, said his agency is determined to help the motorcoach industry remain safe by finding the cause of bus crashes and making recommendations that it believes could prevent similar accidents from occurring in the future.

"Our objective here is not to do just accident investigations, but to do accident prevention so it will keep this industry the safest in the United States," he stressed.

Ironically, his remarks came only a few hours before a resort-owned motorcoach crashed and burned on Interstate 15 near Jean, Nev., injuring more than two dozen of its 40 passengers.

Hugel brought operators up to date on what motorcoach safety activities the FMCSA has been pursuing lately, including increasing the number of compliance reviews it conducts, establishing formal safety inspections in all 50 states, increasing data collection, and speeding up the number of audits it conducts of new carriers and others.

In addition, he said the agency is conducting studies on the causes of bus crashes and what impact driving hours have on driver fatigue.

The bus crash causation study, which has been underway in New Jersey for more than two years, is expected to be completed in May. The study involves examination of 39 crashes, including 19 in which the driver or bus was to blame and 10 in which the driver involved had out-of-service violations.

The fatigue study is reviewing various driver schedules and hours behind the wheel to determine their impact on drivers.

Hugel also told operators the FMCSA has developed a pamphlet dealing with pre-trip safety guidelines that will help operators develop the messages the agency has recommended they give their passengers before each trip. The pamphlets are expected to be available from the agency sometime this month.

The operators also heard from Paul Pitzer, chief of the policy branch of the Transportation Security Administration, who urged them to always keep security issues in the forefront.

He said while they may be easy to forget, they are much like insurance, which is purchased in case of an accident. "Security is here 'just in case' something happens," he said.