Driving Into The Danger Zone
Minimize The Risks Of Transporting Children

By Julie Riddle

Like weather reports and sports scores, it seems to be a staple of the evening news: yet another accident involving a church bus or van. And while some of these tragedies are true accidents--those involving another driver or a patch of ice, for example--even these instances seem to be coming under scrutiny. Fifteen-passenger vans, ubiquitous with churches, are blamed for contributing to a number of accidents, and for worsening the severity of others. Other times, tires are pinpointed as being defective, "poor maintenance" is said to be responsible, or an older vehicle (built without current safety standards) fails. The latter cause is especially troubling since many churches, in an attempt to cut costs, buy such vehicles on a regular basis. Adding to the problem is the common use of inexperienced drivers, a lack of high-quality rear tires, less-than-conservative driving skills, and the practice of transporting items on the roof.

For churches, the issue of safety is especially confusing. Unless church buses are transporting school-age children to and from school or school-related activities, they do not have to conform to the same stringent construction standards traditional yellow school buses do. Congress imposed these standards for traditional school buses in a series of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) in 1976. This, however, was a moot point on Feb. 16, 1999.

On that day, all six children riding in a church-operated van in Wallace, Ga., were killed after a tow truck struck their vehicle. Three were ejected from the 1996 Dodge, which is considered to be "non-conforming" because it was not manufactured to meet the FMVSS standards.

What are you really buying?

In what remains the deadliest drunk driving accident in U.S. history, on May 14, 1988 in Carollton, Ky., a retired school bus being used as a church's activity van was struck by a drunk driver heading northbound in the southbound lanes of a major freeway. The bus driver and 26 (of 66) passengers were killed. Nearly all of them were children or teens. Thirty-four passengers received minor to critical injuries, and six were uninjured. The drunk driver sustained serious injuries, but survived. Passengers in a third car were also unhurt.

While the cause of the crash was undisputed, subsequent investigations blamed the high number of deaths and serious injuries on the bus itself, which had been purchased by the First Assembly of God Church after being retired from a school district's fleet.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent Federal accident investigation agency, investigates accidents to determine the probable cause and make safety recommendations to other government agencies. The NTSB released a report on the accident one year after it happened. Among its findings, it stated: "Contributing to the severity of the accident was the puncture of the bus fuel tank and ensuing fire in the bus, the partial blockage by the rear bench seats of the area leading to the rear emergency door which impeded rapid passenger egress, and the flammability of the materials in the bus seat cushions."

The Kentucky Department of Education also released a report 10 years later, in May 1998, stating that at the time of the accident, "the back emergency door was blocked, forcing passengers to try to escape through the windows. Most of the fatalities were caused by smoke inhalation, particularly of the highly toxic smoke generated by burning seat covers." (Following the Carrollton tragedy, the district later adopted new safety standards for its vehicles, including protective cages for bus fuel tanks, "push-out" windows, flame-retardant seats, emergency roof hatches, left-side emergency doors and all-diesel engines, whose low volatility and ignition rate reduces the chance of a devastating fire.)

So although church vehicles do not face the same scrutiny as their traditional school bus counterparts, when it comes to buying a van to transport children or youth, Sheli Burns of Arizona Bus Sales says that meeting FMVSS standards is the way to go.

"The safest means is to buy a vehicle that has been designed with safety in mind, which meets all FMVSSs for school buses," Burns says. "These vehicles have been tested for both rollover and side impact." (They are constructed with a safety cage for added strength.) "School bus travel is one of the safest forms of transportation in the United States. And just because it's built with school bus safety in mind, it doesn't mean it has to be a yellow school bus--but it would have the protection of one."

Unqualified drivers = big risks

In some cases, of course, the drivers are responsible for accidents involving church vehicles. Too little sleep, too much alcohol, inadequate training--all been identified as factors in past accidents. In some cases, a member of the church's youth or college group is even permitted to take the wheel despite lack of driving experience in that particular vehicle.

Federal regulations require that anyone transporting 16 or more passengers for commercial purposes have a commercial driver's license. No such standard exists for 15-passenger vans, however, vehicles commonly identified with churches.

After a 14-year-old Virginia girl died last year when the church van she was riding in crashed in North Carolina, her stepfather led a measure urging Virginia lawmakers to ban the vehicles. (In this incident, a tire blew out and the vehicle rolled several times.)

But Rae Tyson, a spokesperson for the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), says there is nothing "inherently unsafe" about 15-passenger vans. The agency looks into recalls, the proper use of child safety seats, problems with air bags, and vehicle safety defects, among other things. "It's just that people need to understand these things are trucks, not cars," Tyson explains. "They handle much differently, particularly when loaded. It requires someone behind the wheel who has had some training and experience driving these things."

Another policy that institutions "absolutely must" implement is one requiring passengers and drivers to wear seatbelts at all times, Tyson adds. "A vast majority of the fatalities in fifteen-passenger rollovers are unbelted occupants," he says. "We've seen that time and time again when we go back and look."