WASHINGTON - Federal transportation safety regulators have wasted little time moving ahead with their heightened effort to bolster commercial vehicle safety.

Just a month after announcing a sweeping safety plan aimed at the motorcoach industry, the U.S. Department of Transportation moved forward with a key element of the program: text messaging.

Acting on reports that driver distraction is an important cause of many commercial vehicle accidents, the USDOT ordered a ban on texting while commercial bus and truck drivers are operating their vehicles.

"We want the drivers of big rigs and buses and those who share the roads with them to be safe," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

"This is an important safety step and we will be taking more to eliminate the threat of distracted driving."

The order, issued in late January, took immediate effect. Violators can face civil and criminal penalties of up to $2,750.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said the ban will prevent unsafe activity by drivers.

"We want to make it crystal clear to operators and their employers that texting while driving is the type of unsafe activity that these regulations are intended to prohibit," stressed FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro.

Ferro is expected to repeat that message when she appears later this month at UMA Motorcoach Expo 2010 in Las Vegas.

According to FMCSA research, drivers who send and receive text messages take their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds - the time it takes for a vehicle traveling at 55 miles an hour to cover the length of a football field. The research also indicated that drivers who text while driving are about 20 times more likely to have an accident than non-distracted drivers.

Many motorcoach operators already have strict company policies that prohibit their drivers from texting, and insurance companies that write coverage for the motorcoach industry long have advised their clients to have such policies in place and to enforce them.

Still, some drivers apparently dont get it.

A driver running a recent charter from Oklahoma to Washington D.C., owned up to exchanging text messages with young people on the bus he was driving, maintaining he didnt believe there was any problem with it.

He was discovered after another passenger called the owner of the company when she returned home from the trip.

"There are some things -- like dont come to work naked, or dont come to work drunk -- that are so egregious that they should be understood by an adult," said the coach company owner. And texting certainly is one of them."

The operator promptly fired the driver.

He said his only regret was that firing the driver was the worst he could do to him. Whacking with a 2-by-4 was out of the question.

The ban on texting ordered by the USDOT initially was a recommendation of a special summit on distracted driving that was conducted in September and was incorporated into the sweeping Motorcoach Safety Action Plan the department released in December.

In addition to the text ban, the safety plan calls for measures ranging from mandatory seatbelts and electronic on-board recorders, to new roof standards for buses, to getting rogue bus companies off the road.

It was ordered by LaHood in response to a number of high-profile motorcoach accidents last year and in 2008, and frequent criticism the government was not doing enough to promote the safety of bus passengers.