Some church vans deemed ‘high risk’

The popular form of transportation for churches — 15-passenger vans — may soon not be an option at all.
   
“They are moving in the direction of not insuring them (15-passenger vans) — the insurance industry as a whole,” said Alejandra Soto, spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute in New York.
   
“There have been so many accidents and law suits and that’s how it has really affected insurers; it just becomes too expensive to insure. That’s the general trend,” she said.
She said that eventually if any insurers do insure them, the premiums will likely be so high that it will be cheaper for the insured to invest in a vehicle that has a better insurance rating.
   
This poses a question: Are churches parking their vans and investing in safer transportation or ignoring a  widespread warning about the dangers of 15-passenger vans?
   
“It would be very easy to base our decisions purely on business,” said Jeff Hanna, executive director of GuideOne Center for Risk Management. “But we have the claims and stories about people who are being killed in these vehicles — often eight to 15 people dying at once, and the impact on a ministry is phenomenal. Many ministries have never recovered from these.”
   
GuideOne, the nation’s leading insurer of churches, has stopped writing any new policies on 15-passenger vans. They will consider renewing policies for their existing customers only if drivers attend and pass special driver training courses that teach advanced techniques in operating the 15-passenger vans.
   
These vehicles do not have to pass the passenger tests from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) that other passenger vehicles do, and drivers are not currently required to have a commercial driver’s license — two factors that increase danger to passengers, noted chief operating officer of GuideOne Jan Beckstrom in his testimony regarding van safety before the Maryland Legislature in 2003.
   
Federal legislation introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate this April, if passed, would add a requirement that all 15-passenger vans pass the same NHTSA testing that all other passenger vehicles have been subject to for years.
   
This would render existing and especially older 15-passenger van models that are used to transport people illegal from this standpoint.
Over two years ago these vehicles were proven by the NHTSA to be unsafe for passenger transport.
   
The National Traffic Motor Vehicle Safety Act is an existing federal law that prohibits a dealership from selling a 15-passenger van to a school, church or other entity for the purpose of transporting children through teenagers of traditional high school age.  
   
Because these vans were originally designed to carry cargo, not people, the vehicle’s higher center of gravity by design results in poor balance of the vehicle, especially when carrying 15 people. With the center of gravity being askew, what would be a minor traffic mishap becomes a deadly out-of-control situation. The lack of safety features to protect passengers further endangers them.
   
“We recommend that all churches, day care centers, schools and other groups immediately consider safer transportation alternatives and abandon the use of 15-passenger vans,” GuideOne states. GuideOne insures just under 1,500 churches in Alabama, among them Baptists.
   
If churches must continue to use their 15-passenger vans, expert handling in emergency situations is essential to lessening part of the risk involved with their design, Hanna said. GuideOne strongly recommends that drivers of these vans have a chauffeurs’ license, a commercial driver’s license or have successfully completed an approved school bus training course.
   
Jim Swedenburg, coordinator of annuity and insurance services with the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, strongly recommends that churches allow no one to drive a 15-passenger van unless they have a commercial driver’s license.
   
Swedenburg recommends seating people in the front first, then middle seats and remove the rear seat entirely. “Never seat people in the rear seat with the middle and front seats vacant, and never tow a trailer with one of these vehicles,” Swedenburg said, noting these measures will not guarantee the safety of the vehicles.
   
A church that knows about the risks and does nothing about it, but continues to use the vans as usual takes a big legal risk, according Richard Hammar in Church Law & Tax Report, August 2002. “If a court concludes that a church’s use of a 15-passenger van amounts to ‘gross negligence,’ then the church may be accessed punitive damage (which is not covered under its general liability insurance policy) and the members of the church board may be personally liable,” he said.
   
This transportation with its far-reaching effects is one that affects all churches.
   
“It’s not just a large church issue, because a lot of small churches have one of these vans,” Swedenburg said.
   
A couple of years ago the NHTSA warned that 15-passenger vans were much more likely to rollover and result in more fatalities than regular passenger vehicles, Hanna said.
   
The risk of a fully loaded 15-passenger van rolling over is 70 percent whereas the risk of a passenger car rolling over is less than 10 percent, NHTSA tests show.
   
People or cargo in the back of the van makes it too heavy at the back and raises the center of gravity of the vehicle, causing it to handle improperly on the roadway. Carrying luggage or anything else on the roof greatly aggravates this unbalance. Because of this and other inherent design features present in the van, accidents in these vans result in unusually high numbers of fatalities. Since 1990 more than 500 people have been killed in accidents while riding in or driving these vans, according to the NHTSA.
   
The vans were originally built to transport cargo, not people.
Manufacturers re-outfitted them, adding windows and seats and began selling them as passenger vehicles, but did nothing for passenger safety — no side impact re-enforcement and no redesign to correct rollover problems.
   
Daimler Chrysler stopped making 15-passenger vans in 2002 and General Motors has begun increasing some of its standards, Hanna said.
   
“There’s a lot of questions being asked about the van safety issue,” Swedenburg said. “I’m concerned that it often takes several years for all of our churches to be aware of certain issues, but I hope this one is moving a little more quickly.”