ROAD WORRIERS
Uneasy riders at 3 bad NYC bus firms
Three of the city’s Chinatown bus companies are among the nation’s worst when it comes to safe driving, according to federal data.
Dahlia Group Inc. — which owns the bus and hired the driver that careened into an MTA bus in Queens last week, killing three and injuring 16 — leads the pack.
Dahlia’s US Department of Transportation safe-driving statistics label it as more dangerous than 83 percent of similar carriers nationwide.
Over the last two years, the Flushing-based company has been pegged seven times for unsafe driving, including two instances in which operators zoomed 15 mph or more over the speed limit — considered a severe violation by the DOT.
A Dahlia bus was also in a fatal 2016 rollover crash in Connecticut that left one person dead.
Not far behind Dahlia is Eastern Coach Inc., which is registered in Massachusetts but runs routes almost exclusively from Manhattan’s Chinatown to Baltimore, Washington and Richmond, Va.
Seventy-seven percent of similar-sized US bus lines have safer records than Eastern, the feds have found.
The company has been cited 10 times for speeding and an- other four times for blowing through stop signs and red lights over the past 24 months, data shows.
Rounding out the pack is PandaNY, ak a Eagle Bus Inc., which has a safer driving record than the previous two companies but has more driver and maintenance violations.
The company’s safe-driving record is worse than 63 percent of similar-sized charters, according to the DOT, which has busted Eagle for speeding nearly a dozen times — along with tailgating and improper lane-change citations — over the past two years.
This company is also headquartered in Massachusetts but advertises itself as a “leading Chinatown intercity bus” and makes no stops in the Bay State.
Apparently unconcerned by the company’s poor safety performance, one driver was even cited for not wearing his seat belt, records show.
Inspectors have also slapped the company with three separate violations because drivers did not speak English.
The news didn’t seem to rattle riders, who said they are willing to take their lives in their own hands in exchange for Chinatown buses’ famous low fares.
“Well I’m sure not happy to hear about it. It definitely makes me a little more worried,” said Tamara Foster while boarding an Eastern Coach in Chinatown Thursday.
“I’m still going to ride the bus, though. It’s like dirt cheap, so I guess if that’s the chance we have to take.”
All of the bus company employees The Post researched for this story either did not have working phone numbers or refused to return calls or speak to reporters.