How safe are multi-passenger church vans?
Insurers and federal highway safety officials issue warnings
By Bruce Nolan
NEW ORLEANS -- Little Solid Rock Missionary Baptist Church's big van seemed steady under Lester Beauvais' hands as he and 10 church members seated behind him rode up Interstate 10 on a recent Sunday. The afternoon sky was clear, the road dry. Beauvais held the 1999 Dodge van at 70 mph in the middle lane to line up with his approaching exit, when its left rear tire suddenly blew.
As Beauvais remembers it, all hell broke loose. He managed to wrestle the slowing van off to the right. But when it left the highway it swung around hard, then flipped. The doors flew open. Beaulah Jefferson, at 77 one of Little Solid Rock's stalwarts, and Yolanda Neal Thompson, 35, were thrown out and killed. At least six others were sent to local hospitals. Little Solid Rock's tragedy appears to be a textbook illustration of the safety concerns around a particular kind of van widely used by churches, day-care centers, vanpools, some hotels and college athletic teams. The 15-passenger vans, often called "church vans," are becoming the subject of repeated safety warnings by federal highway safety officials and insurers.
Some insurance companies have demanded that drivers take special courses as a condition of insuring the vans. Some have stopped insuring the vehicles. "They are notoriously unstable," said Ben Pressburg, spokesman for the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission.
The Ford Motor Co., with the largest market share of such vans, defends their safety. It points to data indicating that church vans are no more top-heavy or rollover-prone than other vans or trucks in their class. It says many of the accidents arise from driver error, and many of the injuries occur because passengers are not wearing seatbelts.
Nonetheless, because of their wide use as efficient carriers of teens, athletes and commercial shuttle customers, the vans tend to produce spectacular headlines when they crash. That leads "to the perception that these vehicles are unsafe," when "these vehicles provide a high level of safety comparable to other vehicles in a wide range of conditions," including rollovers, said Kristen Kinley, a Ford spokeswoman. Fifteen-passenger vans are essentially regular cargo vans with the back extended to make room for more seats.
In the usual configuration, a driver and passenger sit up front. Behind them are three, threeperson benches, with a small aisle along one side. At the rear of the van is a wall-to-wall bench seat that can accommodate four people.
When fully loaded, the van carries a significant weight hanging out well beyond its rear axle. With 10 or more passengers, the van's center of gravity is shifted higher and farther to the back, said a recent advisory to drivers from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "As a result, the van has less resistance to rollover and handles differently from other commonly driven passenger vehicles, making it more difficult to control in an emergency situation," the advisory said.
Moreover, the risk of rollover increases dramatically as the van is loaded, so that one carrying 10 passengers is nearly three times more likely to tip than an empty van, a federal safety study found.
In rollover accidents, doors fly open and unbelted passengers are thrown out. But even belted passengers are at significant risk. A study of two van accidents by the National Transportation Safety Board last year found that the roofs of church vans are not required to meet the same crush-resistance standards as those for passenger cars.
Insurers point out that church vans are not required to meet safety standards for either school buses or passenger cars.
Partly as a result, the federal highway safety administration issued warnings in 2001, 2002 and again in June 2004 to users of 15-passenger vans, urging that they be driven only by drivers with experience in that kind of vehicle, and with special attention to their peculiar handling characteristics when fully loaded.
Because of the vans' odd regulatory status, it is against federal law to sell new vans to schools to transport students. But the law is rarely enforced, and nothing forbids the sale of used vans, which is how Little Solid Rock acquired its van a few months ago.
"Little Solid Rock's insurer, Progressive Insurance Co., insures church vans with no special conditions," said Todd Morgano, a company spokesman. "Progressive has not issued special warnings or advisories to clients who own such vans," he said.
Other companies have, launching campaigns urging clients to get rid of the vans as soon as possible and to handle them with great care until then.
GuideOne, one of the leading insurers of churches in the United States, "believes that 15-passenger vans are inherently unsafe as currently used by many owners," Jan Beckstrom, chief operating officer, told the Maryland Legislature last year.
While GuideOne continues to insure 15- passenger vans, it does so only for its current customers, and only if the church limits drivers to those who have taken a video course on the vans' handling characteristics.
Ford recently announced that beginning in 2006 it will begin equipping its church vans with an electronic mechanism to improve stability. General Motors began adding electronic stabilization this year. DaimlerChrysler AG stopped making Dodge full-size vans last year.
Copywright 2004 Religion News Service. Used by permission
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