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SafeGal
New Member
USA
7 Posts |
 Posted - 03/02/2004 : 03:06:16 AM
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My basic arguement is that if these vans were deathtraps as some claim, there would have been some lawsuit or legal action to have them removed from the roads
Jacobs Law ??? South Carolina ??? Lawsuits and legal action is WHY they are so controversial! 
GO to the NTSB website and read the full report and investigation on 15 passenger vans. There's some pretty graphic pictures there as well.
Read it carefully. STRUCTURE. FEDERAL SAFETY STANDARDS. The report barely mentions tires, tire pressure, driver, experience. Anywhere you research these vans - you can also find the NBC Dateline Article as well - its also pretty graphic.
STRUCTURE. STATISTICS. DEAD CHILDREN.
The very reason there is this huge argument here is because some have researched this subject intensely and are trying to get across to others what they have learned.
That final report/investigation was instrumental in laws being changed. Those hefty fines are high for a reason, sadly - most states have some loophole in the law and can get around this. In Missouri - the loophole is wages. As long as the driver is driving as a part of their job (teacher/coach/principal/janitor) and they are NOT paid additional for driving - they are within the law. They are not required to have a school bus permit to transport children. This makes me ill to even think about it knowing I have kids in a school district who has one. No - they don't own it - the athletic club/parent support group does, not the school. They can't own it - its not legal!
On a side note - I am sure there are many states where schools can still buy them, but most schools don't even have to buy them, their PTA, Parent Support Associations/Booster Clubs can buy them and donate them to the schools. On the STN website, click on 15 passenger vans - there is a chart that shows every state and whether it is allowed or not. Actually there is quite a wealth of information there as well, including letters from state governors, pupil transportation associations, physicians, education associations, etc with some VERY STRONG opinions on getting them off the roads.
My own opinion...... I've done my homework in this area and hours & hours of research - my kids will NEVER step foot into one. It is driven by ANYONE with a drivers license. Whoever the school sponsor is - Teacher, coach etc ...
No CDL required, no safety training, no training in defensive driving/adverse weather conditions/accident procedures/vehicle manuevering or even to famaliarize themself with knowing what tire pressure is EVEN normal let alone to know the difference if they are low.
I'm with Richard and many others here - they are not buses!
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Stand up for something or you may fall for anything  |
Edited by - SafeGal on 03/02/2004 03:21:12 AM |
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JK
Top Member
USA
7307 Posts |
Posted - 03/02/2004 : 1:08:18 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by SafeGal
[quote] ... Actually there is quite a wealth of information there as well, including letters from state governors, pupil transportation associations, physicians, education associations, etc with some VERY STRONG opinions on getting them off the roads. ...
About the only label in your list that has good credibility with me are the physicians and a some of the bus safety education associations, most of which happen to also promote seat belts on the school buses.
Most of the others tell you what you want to hear, then do as they damn well please - cutting funding to school bus transportation, slash and burning school bus services, declaring vans should be illegal to use as school buses - while providing every loop hole possible - and all while declaring that CHILDRENS SAFETY IS THEIR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY!!!
RUBBISH! Money is the issue and I believe it has always been this way. Parents correctly present their children as their number one priority, school bus drivers do so correctly to a point. The industry and government? These have the power to make change - are the least interested in doing so if it means they must fund the change. Same with the schools. There can't possibly be any mystery about this.
My mom was right about the politicians: "If the devil lies to you, don't believe him. And if the devil tells you the truth, don't believe him."
School buses are up to 2,000 times safer then walking to school, riding a bike, or riding in the family car. This is true when strictly calculating deaths on the bus to and from school from crashes, omitting all other school bus related events. Each additional event category included in the analysis changes the value: Include or exclude specific times of the day, add deaths because of unsafe school bus environments, deaths at the bus stop, deaths walking to and from the bus stop, deaths the result of school buses crashing into other vehicles and the percentage of safety varies from 500, 200, 150, 100, 25, 8 and 3 times safer - and even not any safer then other modes of transportation. It all depends on what data is included or excluded to arrive at the stat.
Mark Twain said it best, in my opinion: "There are lies, there are damn lies, then there's statistics."
The reality is it depends on the condition of the specific vehicles involved and the skills of the specific drivers involved to determine what the safer mode of transportation really is. A specific school bus or a specific fleet of buses may be safer, but they are also deadly hazards on the road to everyone else in smaller vehicles. Buses out on snow and ice are deadly to everyone else, yet, even when bus drivers themselves find conditions too dangerous to drive those yellow beasts on the roads, what happens next? Click Here for story
There's inherent risk in everything we do:
About 45% of playground-related injuries are severe fractures, internal injuries, concussions, dislocations, and amputations (Tinsworth 2001). Between 1990 and 2000, 147 children ages 14 and younger died from home and public playground-related injuries. Should we ban children from playing? Should playgrounds be unlawful for play?
More catastrophic injuries occur during football practice than during actual games. Should football practice be outlawed?
Look at all the stuff that kill's people - much of it preventable or greatly reduced were we to do things differently. Number of deaths for leading causes of death:
Heart Disease: 700,142
Cancer: 553,768
Stroke: 163,538
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,013
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 101,537
Diabetes: 71,372
Influenza/Pneumonia: 62,034
Alzheimer's disease: 53,852
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 39,480
Septicemia: 32,238
Leading Iatrogenic Causes of Death in the USA:
7,000 Deaths Per Year Medication Errors in Hospitals
12,000 Deaths Per Year Unnecessary Surgery
20,000 Deaths Per Year Medical Errors in Hospitals (excluding Medication Errors)
106,000 Deaths Per Year Non-error, Adverse Reactions to Medications aka Drug Adverse Events.
Yet, among the Nation's leading causes of death, there were declines in mortality from heart disease (3 percent), stroke (nearly 3 percent), accidents/unintentional injuries (nearly 2 percent), and cancer (1 percent). The biggest decline in mortality among the leading cause of deaths was for homicides - down 17 percent. That number had increased sharply in 2001 due to the September 11th terrorist attacks. Excluding the September 11th deaths, the decrease from 2001 to 2002 would have been 3 percent, which still reflects a continuing downward trend in homicides that began in 1991. (Data for U.S. in 2001)
I would suppose wealthy Saudi Arabian dissident Osama Bin Laden actually did not hurt that many people for us to be that concerned about. Even with his September 11 attack U.S. deaths overall dropped 3 percent, according to the stats.
Look at our traffic: I simply don't see enough bus drivers and parents transporting their kids to school in their personal school bus while on the way to work, or even in a collins mini bus. A used Collins costs much less to purchase than the vehicles I see many a bus driver and transportation manager driving while going about their personal business WITH THEIR OWN KIDS AND OTHER KIDS IN THOSE VEHICLES. What is the reason all of America's bus drivers, parents, physicians, PTS people, educrats, bus safety association presidents and politicians are driving motorcycles, cars, pickups, vans or SUV's - and not school buses? And over the years all these other vehicals have killed fewer kids at the bus stop than the school bus.
On the bus, the school bus, by it's size, weight, visibility and noise making, makes it a safer vehicle. Trains are bigger, louder, and safer than school buses, provided we don't count the 400 or so pedestrians run over by trains every year.
When looking at this issue from the correct perspective, and where schools slash and burn transportation services, deny service using boundries as an excuse, discountinue service, provide poor driver training, poor support, hostile school bus environments and poor vehicle maintenance, then, yes, a properly maintained van pool with an experienced driver are a safe option to transport kids to and from school and elsewhere.
Your personal opinion and those with you remains valid, as does mine and those with me. As far as what the politicians and much of the industry have to say, I have doubts as to their creditability concerning this issue and a few other school bus safety issues. (jk)
15-Passenger vans are not school buses!
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Edited by - JK on 03/02/2004 5:26:44 PM |
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WI Handy Bus
Senior Member
USA
64 Posts |
Posted - 03/02/2004 : 6:09:09 PM
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Not to change the subject, but baptistbusman asked some time ago about liberator tires at wal mart. I have been told that this brand of tire is a goodyear "knock-off", that is, a cheaper version of a tire produced by goodyear. I am a very finicky person when it comes to tires, as I have had the experience of changing over from a discount brand of tires with 60% tread left, to new name brand tires on a truck I owned several years ago.
The difference was PHENOMENAL. Now all my vehicles get new Continentals whenever I feel they are required. Good tires are the cheapest insurance policy you will ever buy for your vehicle, besides good brakes.
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, which also applies to 15 pass vans. This whole argument boils down to one thing.....$$$$$$$$$. To my way of thinking if you are transporting over 8 students to any function..take a bus. We are supposed to be transportation professionals, let us drive the appropriate equipment in order to act like professionals. Let those parents who reproduce proactively to the tune of 8 to 12 children families buy and use 15 pass vans, and when these accidents occur, chalk it up to what vehicle the parents decided to buy. The simple fact is that vans simply do not have the level of safety engineering built into them that a school bus has.
The van's original intent, as designed in the 60's ( or 40's if you consider a panel truck a van ) was to transport 1 driver, 1 passenger and whatever cargo you stuffed in the back. Then some enterprising soul decided to put seats in the back of his so he could haul around his brood.....Detroit picks this up and runs with it...by the time the Feds decide this is a bad idea, it has become so ingrained in the public need and Detroit's pocketbook that there is no way this design can be pulled from the road. To this day, people are still nuts about it, need I say mini-VAN?
The van design could be safe if Detroit would spend the money to make the van body strong enough to at least approximate in some ways, a school bus. But here again we go back to the old dollar sign...business as usual |
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JK
Top Member
USA
7307 Posts |
Posted - 03/02/2004 : 7:06:08 PM
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Originally posted by WI Handy Bus
... I am a very finicky person when it comes to tires, as I have had the experience of changing over from a discount brand of tires with 60% tread left, to new name brand tires on a truck I owned several years ago.
Good for you. I agree with much of what you said, especially the above. Same experience with cheap "Kelly" tires in those days. Nearly new and shredded within a few hundred miles. Can't remember the brand I switched to, regardless, put 10 ply/4 or 6 ply sidewalls on a large van with air shocks - that rig handled as well as any large vehicle, better than some. No doubt in my mind one or more road situations were successfully overcome because of good tires and the added maneuvering of that van. Several close calls in my years behind the wheel of that van - mostly people cutting me off while driving at night. Most, based on their driving, seemed drunk behind the wheel. Ruts on the side of the road get plenty into a crash - trying to whip back on the road and flipping or shooting across lanes into the ditch on the other side. So many forget that simply slowing down and calmly returning to the road works for any vehicle. For me, no crashes or accidents, not one and regardless of the vehicle. (jk) |
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skoolhack
Senior Member
76 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2004 : 6:48:29 PM
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The buses that Liberty manufactures can and most likely do meet FMVSS requirements as they apply to school buses.
Both Ford and GMC/Chevy have produced vans for years that are prepared to be converted for school bus use by a final stage manufacturer. You will see labels in vans that say "Not for use as a school bus" but a van can be converted for that use. It has been done since the early 70's. And with a very safe record I might add.
Steel infrastructure is added in the sides and roof areas to meet rollover. Fuel systems are certified by Ford or GM to FMVSS 301. To answer a question from above, the fuel tanks on these buses are mounted in-between the frame sections of the van so they do essentially have a cage around them.
Fully loaded, non-converted 15-pass. vans can be tricky and have been involved in a number of high profile accidents. However, the small Type A van conversions that have been around for 30+ years have a tremendous safety record and are very tough. Let's make sure we know of which we speak.
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Van dangers overlooked by schools
