John Betts, who lost his son David in a bus accident in Atlanta, March 2, 2007, speaks to reporters in Washington, Tuesday, July 8, 2008. Parents of members of the Bluffton University baseball team bus crash victims attended a meeting of the National Transportation Safety Board. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke)

The National Transportation Safety Board put heavy blame on the Georgia Department of Transportation Tuesday for an Atlanta bus crash last year that killed five college baseball players, saying confusing highway signs were a primary cause.

The board also cited driver error and a lack of safety features such as seat belts as key factors, fueling calls for tougher standards on U.S. bus operators.

Investigators said the bus driver in the March 2 accident thought he was staying in an HOV lane when he drove onto an elevated exit ramp, plowing through a stop sign at highway speed and hurtling from an overpass back onto the interstate below. Five members of Ohio's Bluffton University baseball team, along with the driver and his wife, were killed. The crash injured another 28 people.

NTSB investigators said Georgia officials changed the initial design of the exit signs after having trouble mounting them. The change deviated from federal guidance on pairing some exit signs together to make them more clear, they said, but it did not amount to a violation of federal regulations, which allow for some exceptions.

NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker called it "an accident that didn't have to happen."

No fatalities were reported at the accident site in the ten years before HOV lanes were introduced in the mid-1990s, but there have been three fatal wrecks in the decade since, the board said.

"Had the appropriate investigation been done at the state level we might not be here today," Rosenker said.

Georgia DOT Commissioner Gena Abraham said in a statement that the agency "heard quite clearly" the NTSB recommendations, which included a call for the state to further improve the Interstate 75 interchange.

"We do understand. We are going to consider every option put before us," she said.

Georgia DOT has said it received no complaints about the interchange before the crash, although police reports show that three drivers who had earlier wrecks at the site said they misread signs and did not realize they had left the HOV lane before they crashed.

The NTSB recommended Tuesday that the Federal Highway Administration proceed with a proposal announced after the bus crash to require more clear, consistent signs at similar traffic configurations around the country. Georgia already has made some improvements at the crash site.

Investigators said the 65-year-old bus driver, Jerome Niemeyer, was also at fault.

He had a good record and had been driving for only an hour before the early-morning crash, they said. But his medical certificate, which is required by law, had recently expired.

The outdated certification was one of many violations the board found at the now-defunct bus operator, Executive Coach Luxury Travel Inc., based in Ottawa, Ohio.

Still, they found no evidence that fatigue or medical problems contributed to the crash.

Instead, the driver simply "missed what route guidance was available" and didn't slow down as he came up the exit ramp, despite two signs notifying drivers of a stop ahead, investigator Deborah Bruce said.

The transportation safety board also expressed frustration that federal regulators have not acted on its long-standing recommendations for improved safety features on motorcoaches. The NTSB has recommended seat belts or other passenger restraints such as shatterproof windows and stronger roofs since a 1968 head-on collision involving a Greyhound bus killed 19 passengers near Baker, Calif.

The Transportation Department has not implemented the recommendations, however, and Congress has remained quiet as the bus industry has lobbied heavily against costly new standards.

Industry officials maintain that buses are among the safest forms of travel and that more crash test data is needed before the government takes action.

But parents of the crash victims several of whom attended Tuesday's meeting in Washington have seized on the accident to campaign for tougher regulations.

They are pushing for bipartisan legislation introduced after the wreck by Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, that would force regulators to act. The bill is currently stuck in committee.

John Betts, whose son, David, was killed in the crash, said if the NTSB's proposals had been adopted, "our sons would be alive today."

"That's not a wish. That's not a fantasy. That's a fact," he said. "The apathy has gone on too long. These recommendations were made 40 years ago."

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