Vehicle safety disregarded at company that owned bus in Louisville crash that killed six

May 8—LOUISVILLE — National Transportation Safety Board documents reveal inadequate vehicle and driver safety measures at LBFNY Solar, the company that owned a bus involved in a January 2023 collision that killed six people onboard.

In April 2022, the U.S. Department of Transportation ordered LBFNY to cease intrastate and interstate transportation because the company never submitted a required safety audit. The NTSB and state Department of Transportation said the bus had been haphazardly modified to increase its capacity from 15 to 21, and the modifications never received any safety inspection. The agencies also say the bus didn't have enough seat belts.

On Jan. 28, 2023, around 6:02 a.m., the 2013 Chevy Express bus was westbound on Route 37. The bus, owned by Weedsport-based LBFNY, was carrying 15 workers to a solar farm installation on County Route 6 in the town of Oswegatchie. At the same time, a 2021 Freightliner truck, with a 26-foot box, was eastbound.

The truck driver was Harly N. Diaz-Baez, 25, Bronx, bringing auto parts to Blevins Seaway Motors in Massena. Christopher Valiro-Torres, 36, of Venezuela, was driving the bus. The bus consisted of a Chevrolet Express chassis and a Micro Bird school bus body. The truck was a Freightliner M-2 106 straight truck with a 26-foot Morgan box, according to the NTSB's preliminary report.

As the two vehicles approached each other, the box truck crossed over the highway centerline and collided with the driver's side of the bus. Six bus occupants died in the crash, two were seriously injured, six had minor injuries, and one was uninjured. The truck driver, who was the only occupant in the truck, was seriously injured, according to the NTSB's preliminary report. A final report has not yet been issued. At the time of the crash, NTSB officials said that process typically takes 12 to 18 months.

The six killed were Mexican citizens in the country legally to work for LBFNY, the company's CEO, Jim P. Begley, said in the days after the crash. The deceased were Alejandro Vazquez Valdez, 45, Jesus Martinez Parra, 44, and Pedro Pablo Galicia Ignacio, 29, all of Puebla, Mexico; Abel De Jesus Lopez Lopez, 39, and Jonatan Hernadez Gomez, 25, of Chiapas, Mexico; and Jose De Jesus Aguirre Tronco, 35, of Vigencia, Mexico.

In a transcript of a Jan. 31, 2023, interview of Begley by NTSB investigators, Begley discusses some of LBFNY's lax safety practices. He also said they do not post job advertisements, but use word of mouth to recruit migrant workers via recommendations that usually come from current migrant employees' families and friends.

NTSB documents reveal that the driver of the NTSB bus, Valiro-Torres, had only a Venezuelan driver's license and had no licensing of any kind from New York. His license in Venezuela only qualified him to drive standard passenger vehicles. Investigators also wrote that he did not have a valid medical exam, as required by law to drive that bus.

In the transcribed interview, NTBS investigator Michael Fox asks Begley how he validates LBFNY's driver's licenses.

"And how do you validate that license? Do you run a DMV report or anything?" Fox asked.

"We don't," Begley answered. "We just trust."

He added that the company drivers have "no documented, formal training."

"We go on a road test and make sure the guy could handle" driving the bus, Begley said.

A post-crash compliance review identified 16 safety violations by LBFNY. They include failure to implement alcohol/drug testing and failing to perform post-accident alcohol/drug testing on the driver, allowing the driver to operate the bus without a valid CLP or CDL, using a driver not medically examined and certified, failure to require the driver to prepare a record of duty status and using a commercial motor vehicle not periodically inspected.

The LBFNY bus consisted of parts of two different vehicles, investigators found. It was a 15-passenger 2013 Chevy Express Bus chassis with the body from an 18-passenger Micro Bird school bus that had previously been owned by a school district downstate. Begley bought the bus for $8,500 through a third-party vendor in November 2021. The bill of sale shows Begley bought it using the LLC for a farm he owns, Breeze Farms LLC, rather than LBFNY.

After buying the bus, Begley used in-house LBFNY workers to install its bus body on the Chevy chassis. That raised its capacity to 18 passengers. The NTSB said that the two added bench seats, which raised the capacity to 21 and did not have seat belts, were "in excess of the manufacturer's designed seating capacity" and were "not secured in a workmanlike manner." That document describes the way the seats were attached as, "self tapping, lag screws securing seat to floor. Riveted to side door. Two small tack welds." Also, the "bus has no proof of any periodic/annual inspection."

"[The two bench seats] are simply screwed to the floor and tack welded to the wheelchair door. These two bench seats do not have seat belts," investigators reported.

The bus had not had a safety inspection since July 2021, prior to the modifications, when it was still a 15-passenger bus.

"LBFNY provided no documentation showing that they ever attempted to inquire about NYSDOT requirements regarding the alterations and modifications made to vehicles," investigators wrote.

In December 2021, LBFNY received an inspection exemption from the state Department of Transportation because the company claimed the only use of the fleet was to bring workers to and from job sites in New York. That was revoked in April 2022, and the USDOT ordered LBFNY to cease vehicle operations.

"This exemption letter was later rescinded due to LBFNY never having a ... New Entrant Safety Audit performed, no inspection performed, and transported employees across state lines, which is considered interstate not intra-state as per the reason for the exemption provided in the letter," NTSB documents say. "The carrier was [revoked] from the New Entrant Safety Program due to a No-Show for the Safety Audit. Subsequently, the carrier was placed under a Federal Out-of-Service Order effective April 26, 2022."

During Begley's interview with the NTSB in the days following the tragedy, he acknowledged LBFNY not only continued to operate vehicles but also kept taking workers across state lines. In the interview transcript, Begley said, "in this calendar year, we have been in Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York."

The bus involved in the fatal crash was registered in Montana through a shell corporation Begley created. It was required by law to be registered in New York.

"The carrier stated that the company did not have any brick-and-mortar building or any offices or fleet in Montana and used a third-party service to become an LLC in Montana." NTSB investigators wrote. "[Begley] further stated that he used a mail forwarding service to receive related company mail and correspondence from the Montana PO Box address. Per the post-crash NYSDOT Driver Vehicle Examination Report, one of the violations found was for operating a passenger CMV with an incorrect registration because the bus was registered in Montana, not New York as required, and the carrier had no physical address in Montana."

In the interview, Begley claimed that the bus was registered in Montana to "avoid sales tax and just, Montana just seemed to be the easiest state to register motor vehicles in and it was a little faster process than New York State." He added, "now I'm wishing it all registered in New York State."

Begley also described how the LBFNY migrant workers are constantly moving from job to job installing solar panels, never really settling in one place. He said the workers take about two months to install solar panels and live in a hotel the whole time. They finish the job, move on to the next, and keep repeating that process.

"We complete a project and then, you know, we'll take a day and we'll move to a new hotel, you know, somewhere else, wherever the next project is ... that's their home," Begley said.

"So, they're not ever returning back home unless they take a vacation?" NTSB investigator Fox asked.

"Correct ... they're migrants. I mean ..." Begley said, and does not finish the sentence.