Safety in the (Stage)coach Industry

[Kevo00]

This weekend saw two very severe crashes involving coaches on intercity routes - the most covered crash, perhaps, was the 'Oxford Tube', which rolled onto its side on an M40 sliproad http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ox ... e-11980861 on Saturday night, the other being a multi vehicle crash on the M5 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-he ... r-11980704 apparently caused when a Megabus travelling from Cardiff to Leeds crashed into a truck, forcing it onto the opposite carriageway and leading to a pile up in which one man died.

Interesting isn't it that you can have two bad crashes on the same night involving the same company and the media doesn't start running sensationalist 'Killer coach danger' stories in the same way that it would these were rail crashes. Admittedly no one travelling in the coaches died, but in both cases its a real miracle. Having once been on a Megabus that suffered a blowout at speed because the driver left the Redhugh Bridge in Newcastle too fast, and remembering the bad accident on a National Express coach at the M25/M4 junction a couple of years ago, I honestly think its about time that coach safety got as much scrutiny as rail safety does. Especially as coaches are increasingly taking the traffic that can't afford to go by rail - or is this why its deemed uninteresting by the media? Anyone here got any other horror coach stories?

[Ameecher]

I've never really been familiar with long distance coach travel since moving to Dundee (previously where I lived there was 1 NatEx coach a day that left at 7am so I never saw it!) but I've certainly become more aware of them. Certainly they travel through the city at alarming speed, Kev will know Riverside Drive is treated like a racetrack by everyone but the speed the come off Riverside Drive onto South Marketgait I'm often left questioning if they'd be capable of stopping especially given the road conditions recently. Similar experiences of long distance service coaches on the Kingsway in Dundee really put me off the idea even if the price seems attractive.

[audigex]

I bloody hate coaches!

Perhaps growing up in a town where there's no NatEx or MegaBus link I've never thought about it, but even now that it's an option I'd rather get the train.

[EXTspotter]

Long distance coach travel is horrible. I avoid it like the plague.

[John]

Especially as coaches are increasingly taking the traffic that can't afford to go by rail - or is this why its deemed uninteresting by the media? Anyone here got any other horror coach stories?

Because road deaths are common, and thus boring. For this reason the death of 3000 a year is perfectly acceptable.

There was an intestering article on how the media reports stuff like this, but i can't find it now...

[Dave]

Had a very nasty moment when the turbo blew out on a coach on the way to France one year. 50 kids sat in a bus on the roadside.

[Kevo00]

Especially as coaches are increasingly taking the traffic that can't afford to go by rail - or is this why its deemed uninteresting by the media? Anyone here got any other horror coach stories?

Because road deaths are common, and thus boring. For this reason the death of 3000 a year is perfectly acceptable.

There was an intestering article on how the media reports stuff like this, but i can't find it now...

Yeah - this is clear - but this is a bit different from car crashes - the consequences are often worse, (not statistically, but in individual crashes) and this is a situation where a corporate body is responsible for passenger safety, not just the individual driver. I think its probably only a matter of time before a lot of lives will be lost, and others injured in a very bad accident, perhaps if two coaches crash. The low margins in the industry probably mean that drivers are given minimal training beyond their initial PCV license, which effectively means they are left to their own devices with no supervision. Just driving up and down the M1 I see coaches behaving badly all the time - overtaking me in the restricted 50mph zone between MK and Luton where they are upgrading, for example (are they immune to the average speed cameras). I don't understand why, if an HGV has to be fitted with a 56mph limiter, then coaches seem to be allowed to travel at 70 - or more, when they are just the same size to me in my Micra.

If anyone thinks I'm just talking in the hypotheticals here, the 2007 Heathrow crash demonstrated how bad a coach crash can be - killing three people, leaving three members of the same family with amputations, and leaving none of the 69 passengers aboard the bus without injuries. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 238892.ece

[SquireJames]

You make some very valid points. Another issue I don't think the media ever report is that in rail crashes, there are a variety of situations that can lead to a crash; Faulty permanent way for example, signal failure, etc. There are few crashes where driver error is the primary cause. However in coach crashes, it's almost ALL driver error. They speed anyway, even more dangerous in wet or icy weather, as you mentioned they drive recklessly to say the least.

[Doorslammer]

Try some of our local long distance coaches. They are fairly new and modern, but the roads in the country make UK B-roads look like a table smooth surface. Perth to Albany is a 10 hour coach trip, luckily I only had to go halfway.

I would have thought the quality of European long distance coach trips would have been far higher, because at least you have drivers hours and tachometers to adhere to.

[LaSeandre]

Out of the 4 times I've travelled to London, I've done it once by rail (Virgin, natch), twice by Megabus (with the newish Van Hool coaches) and once by First Glasgow's "Night Flyer" service (which, incidentally, is becoming another Greyhound service in January).

I mean, of course I'd prefer to have travelled by rail, but I'm not exactly flush with cash at the moment, being unemployed/not a student and all, so I have to make do with the coach. To be honest, there were some shaky moments on both services, but First's, perversely, seemed safer, perhaps due to the fact it was a single decker (Plaxton Panthers to be precise). The Megabus service fair crammed you in and the wind had a bit of a weaving effect on the coach. If we did crash, I wouldn't have trusted the rather pathetic legroom in the Megabus coach as being satisfactory for any kind of brace position (not that you'd really get the chance to get in such position, but you get the idea).

[donchatryit]

^ Hence why I try to book far enough in advance that flights beat the bus on price.

TBH, I actually reckon that we do need to regulate the coach industry a lot better. IIRC, unless the bus is using a tacometer, the driver can do whatever he wants and get away with it, so long as the police aren't around. Even then, I am not entirely sure how often tacometers are even checked! Compare this to rail and air where every move is monitored and you see the issue.

Obviously, the only way to roll out this kind of monitoring for coaches would be incredibly expensive and unpopular. Maybe as a middle way, forcing the installation of speed limiters and maybe having tacometers that record data digitally and broadcast it to a central office might be a neat way of calming the industry down.

[Kevo00]

Do coaches even have tachometers? My sense is that the haulage industry ones are quite closely monitored among the larger companies, though the smaller ones might try to get away with the odd fiddle. There are DfT checkpoints for trucks although they don't seem to be manned much. It seems truly perverse to me that we have better standards for carrying freight than people. And yes, if a Megabus crashes head on I suspect a lot of passengers may loose their legs...

On the Megabus topic - I once took a Megabus from London-Dundee (12 hours!) - and the bus gave someone a lift from Buchannan Street to the Stagecoach Glasgow depot (I wondered where we were going on this industrial estate!), and someone else a lift from Perth bus station to an isolated house just off the A90...Brian Soutar himself, perhaps? Not exactly professional anyway, especially when the bus was already behind time...

[LaSeandre]

I believe you need a tachometer in a long-distance coach. I'm not sure how long the threshold for "long-distance" is however. Also, coaches are legally required (however much companies get away with not doing so) to be electronically limited to 62mph or less.

[andel]

Any vehicle carrying more than 8 passengers for hire-and-reward is required to have a Tacho. A larger licenced operator can have 10% of their Operators Licence used by vehicles with less than 8 seats, such as accessible mini buses.

[Kevo00]

Well, we definitely don't mean vehicles carrying under 8 passengers here! Crikey, imagine if the bus companies exploited this and the M1 and M6 get clogged up by swarms of South Africa style minivans...

Of course, the bus companies do change drivers on long journeys, but we don't know how long each driver goes up and down his bit of route for.

[andel]

Yes we do - they have an individual tacho.

And quite a few operators use the less than 8 seat rule but its down to if it will make them money.

[audigex]

Just get some very long seats and mount them sideways.

"There are over 400 people on this bus!"
"Yes Guv'na, but there's only 8 chairs"

[LaSeandre]

Well, on the First Glasgow Nightflyer from Glasgow-London, the same driver does the whole journey, with his rest period taken in the middle at Charnock Richard services. And it is only nightly, so one driver goes down, has a day in London, comes back up, day or two off, and repeats.

[Doorslammer]

A very common practice where I was from, the small vehicle hire. It can encompass taxis, limos, anything that can be specially hired. Being rural, there wasn't much demand for the more publicised large coach most of the time, despite their already numerous presence.

[audigex]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-12076811

Obviously this could be a private hire or a Stagecoach/NatEx at this time, it doesn't say, and we've no idea about the circumstances, but yet another coach crash.