A driver who was distracted while trying to fix a problem with his doors, lack of seat belts that left passengers with no restraints, and the lack of stability control systems in the vehicle - a report by the National Transportation Safety Board blames all of these factors for the serious injuries and deaths that resulted from the Arizona bus crash last year.

On January 30, 2009, a bus carrying approximately 71 passengers, including a large group of Chinese tourists and their tour guide, flipped over on a rural Arizona highway. At least 15 of the passengers were ejected, which was not surprising considering that the bus was not equipped with seat belts. Seven passengers died, including the tour guide and six Chinese tourists. Ten other people were seriously injured.

Now, the NTSB has presented its report on the causes of the bus accident. The report blames the inattention of the driver for the crash. The driver had been engaged in fixing a problem with airflow in his door. With his attention turned away from the road, he lost control of the bus and it overturned, coming to rest on its side.

If anything, this deadly bus accident illustrates that there are distractions beyond the sort of technological distractions that Las Vegas personal injury lawyers and highway safety groups typically focus on. Any time you are engaged in any activity that takes your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road even for a few seconds, you increase the risks of an accident. This is what seems to have happened here.

The NTSB report also offered stinging criticism for the failure of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to require seat belts on all commercial buses of the same size. These recommendations were made at least 10 years ago, but the FMCSA has failed to act on these. The NTSB estimates that many of the passengers could have been saved if they had been safely restrained in their seats at the time of the crash. The agency also noted that the bus did not come with stability control systems or lane departure warning systems.

A tawdry system that has failed to ensure seat belts in commercial buses is not likely to rush to require lane departure systems and stability control systems anytime soon. The report should be a wake-up call to the FMCSA to speed up the implementation of passenger restraint systems on all commercial buses and school buses.