WASHINGTON The administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration says his agency has improved its oversight and compliance reviews of high-risk truck and bus companies, but more work remains to be done.

'We have significantly increased our compliance reviews since 2004,' FMCSA Administrator John Hill told members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. States deserve much of the credit, said Hill, who singled out California and Minnesota in particular.

The Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999, which created the FMCSA, required the agency to reduce fatalities involving commercial motor vehicles by 50 percent by 2009, and to submit a plan to Congress to quantify the agencys progress.

In 1999, 5,365 individuals were killed in large commercial vehicle crashes, compared to 5,212 in 2005, a reduction of less than 3 percent.

Calvin Scovell, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, told the committee that while the FMCSA has made important progress, that progress appears to have 'flatlined,' and further reductions in the fatality rate will be difficult to achieve.

One specific area Hill identified as needing improvement is the verification of driver records when a compliance review is conducted. In the future, Hill said, the FMCSA will run checks on all drivers employed by companies with 20 drivers or less.

U.S. Rep. Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore., asked why FMCSA wouldn't include companies with more than 20 drivers.

It's a matter of manpower, Hill replied, and it wouldn't be practical to check all of the drivers at a huge fleet. Hill said 90 percent of carriers have 10 vehicles or less.

Following the hearing, one motorcoach industry safety expert said that having the FMCSA run driving history records, known as MVRs, "could get very interesting."

'The problem for operators is they do not really have any true way to know a driver's previous accident history. Some of that activity shows up on the MVR (motor vehicle report), particularly if there was a violation associated with it, but little if any detail.

'Until a few years ago, agents provided MVRs to the operators -- free of charge -- as a service, and they had to order them anyhow for the insurers.

'Privacy laws preempted that and unfortunately, and all too often, there is no MVR in the driver qualification file.

'The bar is simply too low,' said the coach industry source.

Will the FMCSA be able to make good on Hills promise of verifying driver records. 'I personally have serious doubts, said the safety specialist. 'FMCSA has not proven to be a great gatherer of information, and the data they do compile they seem at a loss as to what to do with it.'

Hill told the committee that the FMCSA 'is working to provide motor carriers with the information they need to check the records of their drivers.

As part of FMCSA CSA 2010 initiative, safety violations will be evaluated monthly to determine the motor carrier's status, rather than waiting for an on-site review, said Hill, who added that a pilot test of CSA 2010 will be conducted in four states.

True safety evaluations depend not just on crash data but on driver and carrier data, Deborah Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, told the committee.

'We made this recommendation in 1999,' Hersman said. 'It would be ambitious (for FMCSA) to get it done by 2010."

Hill said CSA 2010 will include both drivers and carriers.

U.S. Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., asked Hill whether any progress has been made in improving the commercial driver licensing process.

Plans are being drawn to merge the CDL and medical certifications, Hill said, and a notice of proposed rulemaking on the training of entry-level drivers is pending. Hill hopes the notice will be issued later this year. 'The industry is very interested in this issue,' he said.

U.S. Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., asked Inspector General Scovell, 'What is the major (safety) issue? How can we address this issue?'

Scovell's response: 'We believe a prime focus should be on the driver.'

'Would tamper-proof safety logging help?' Napolitano asked.

'That would help us, as far as documenting hours of service and false logbook entries,' Scovell said.