WASHINGTON At the conclusion of the day-long hearing last month on the September 2005 bus fire that killed 23 nursing home residents fleeing Hurricane Rita, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board met with a small group of reporters to answer questions about the report the NTSB is preparing on the tragedy.

Chairman Mark Rosenkers message was sobering: If you ride a private bus or motorcoach in the United States, you are gambling with your life if you think your ride will be safer because the bus operator is regulated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Its a case of "buyer beware," and "youre taking your chances," he said

Nearly one-half of the hearing Rosenker presided over consisted of a constant cacophony of criticism of the FMCSA by both NTSB members and professional staff.

The frustration with the FMCSA among board members was palpable. Some appeared to border on apoplexy when they voiced their grievances about the agency that regulates over-the-road bus and truck safety.

It was stunning to listen to presidential appointees rail against a major federal safety agency.

The nexus of their aggravation with the FMCSA stems from the NTSB having spent tens of thousands of man hours and tens of millions of dollars investigating highway accidents, developing recommendations based on information and data collected from the accidents, and then watching the FMCSA fail to act on most of the recommendations.

"I see a horrible problem here," said Rosenker during the hearing. "Since 1999, we have made 65 recommendations (to the FMCSA) in eight years. Only 26 have been closed. Some acceptable; some unacceptable; two-thirds are still open.

"These are good recommendations, collected from good data by different members of the board. Yet, nothing is done," he said.

While the specific criticisms of the FMCSA by the NTSB run the gamut, the principal concerns are that:

* The system the FMCSA operates for inspecting buses and trucks is a mess and wont be fixed for another three years at the earliest. Most likely it will be five to eight years before the system is upgraded, NTSB officials think.

* Not enough carriers are being inspected.

* When the FMCSA does conduct in-depth inspections, it and its contractors focus on the wrong priorities. Seldom are bad companies shut down.

"The system theyve got isnt putting people out of service," said NTSB board member Deborah Hersman. And, on those rare occasions when bad operators are shut down, they "continue to operate after being put out of service. The system is like Swiss cheese," she charged.

Hersman leveled some of the days sharpest criticism of the FMCSA. A sampling:

* There is a "tolerance of safety violations."

* The agency "is not succeeding."

* There is a "systemic problem" . . . it is "unbelievable these (accidents) keep happening."

* "Has anything changed since this agency was created?

She even questioned some of the figures FMCSA administrators have touted in recent years regarding the number of compliance reviews the agency conducts. The implication of her comments was that the figures were being inflated or manipulated.

She noted that the FMCSA budget has nearly doubled in the past seven years, going from $269 million in fiscal 2001, to $521 million requested for fiscal 2007, but the number of compliance reviews has not increased proportionately.

Hersman also expressed frustration that the FMCSA has not assigned a clear priority to significantly expanding its monitoring of passenger carriers.

Both she and Board Member Steven Chealander noted that California conducts a compliance review of every California-based motorcoach operator annually. "California does have a priority system for their bus companies," said Chealander.

Virtually every member of the board criticized the FMCSA compliance review process for giving equal weight to all six elements that are examined by inspectors: accident review; financial responsibility; maintenance review; commercial drivers license, FMCSRs and controlled-substance testing, and driver review; hours-of-service review, and (primarily for truckers) hazardous material.

"The FMCSA gives the same weight to all six factors," said one board member. "There are two major factors in accidents: Vehicles and drivers." That is what the FMCSA should be focusing on, the board members asserted.

Also blasted was the rating model the FMCSA uses to decide which companies are inspected and what aspects of the companies are to be checked. The system fails to identify unsafe operators, the board members charged.

Examples were citied of companies with satisfactory safety ratings having high-profile fatal accidents and the FMCSA going in afterward and giving the company an unsatisfactory rating.

Global Limo, the company whose bus fire triggered the hearing, was one of those companies. It had a compliance review in 2004, roughly a year before the fire, and was rated satisfactory. However, under the FMCSA system, the companys buses were not inspected as part of the compliance review.

Bruce Magladry, director of the NTSB Office of Highway Safety, said the FMCSA scheme is so defected that had the FMCSA not carefully inspected the Global Limo buses after the fire, the company "likely would have not been put out of service."

Chealander said the problem with the FMCSA is so serious that he and other NTSB members have "got to get someones attention.

"If we need to go en banc to Congress to get someones attention, we need to do it. We need to talk to people who can do something about this."