WASHINGTON Reacting to a string of accidents, as well as outside criticism, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has ordered his department to conduct a comprehensive review of commercial bus safety.

The review, which will involve three USDOT agencies, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Highway Administration, is scheduled to be completed by August.

The announcement of the review came just days after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was blasted by the National Transportation Safety Board for failing to implement recommendations that could lead to new safety equipment on buses, including passenger restraints and stronger roofs and windows. (See accompanying article.)

The safety board has prodded the highway traffic safety administration to enact its suggestions for 10 years.

The criticism of NHTSA came at a safety board hearing conducted to make public the results of the NTSB investigation of a bus crash near Mexican Hat, Utah, in January 2008 that killed nine people and injured 43.

Two years earlier, the NTSB aimed its guns at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, another DOT agency, saying it had failed to identify dangerous motorcoach operators and get them off the road.

The catalyst for the criticism in 2007 was the horrible bus fire near Wilmer, Texas, in September 2005 that killed 23 nursing home residents.

The NTSB hearing conducted in the wake of that tragedy was punctuated time and time again with stinging criticism of the FMCSA by safety board members.

"I'm really pleased that somebody over there is finally looking at motorcoach safety," Jackie Gillan, vice president of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, told a Washington newspaper. "The secretary needs to look at this mode of transportation and get the agency moving."

Gillan asserted that LaHood's review should not be viewed as a substitute for congressional action on motorcoach safety.

"Legislation will ensure at the end of the day all these things are done," she said.

According to the latest government data, 51 people died in commercial motorcoach crashes in 2007, an increase from 39 in 2006. Figures for 2008 aren't yet available. Since 2000, at least 401 people have died in motorcoach accidents.