What about the Transportation Action Plan? The following vans do not yet meet our safety criteria and should not be used by our customers: School buses, minibuses and minivans continue to be our preferred vehicles for transporting children. In order to qualify, vans must be manufactured after 2011 and be equipped with the following safety features:Īcceptable vans, in order of preference, are as follows:ĭespite improvements, it’s important to note that these vans are still rated relatively poorly for safety-and will cost more to insure as a result. In recognition of these improvements, we are updating our policy to allow customers to use certain 12- and 15-passenger vans. Several models are now available with innovations that seek to address the safety deficits of previous models. The automotive industry has been working hard to respond to safety concerns. Thank you for continuing to work with us to raise the bar for what is considered safe. The work we did together made a difference-both in directly protecting children in your care, and in creating an environment where manufacturers felt obliged to step up and make improvements. Once again, we want to say thank you to all of you for your support and collaboration in tackling the risk of unsafe 12- and 15-passenger vans. Below this message are the details of how our guidance is changing-and also how it is staying the same. Thanks to improvements made by the automotive industry, we are now accepting some specific models of 12- and 15-passenger vans to be used by our customers. We want to recognize that work, and we continue to encourage you to transport people in buses, mini-buses, SUVs and mini-vans wherever possible. Together, over several years, we significantly reduced the number of vans being used to transport children. We are profoundly grateful for how our customers received this message, working hard to implement safer alternatives in order to keep their communities safe. The lack of side impact protection caused the vans’ walls to crumple in a rollover, causing more severe injury and death.The vans’ uneven weight distribution (from passenger aisle, high roof and seating extending beyond the rear axel), gave the van a higher propensity for rolling over and tire blow out.12- and 15-passenger vans were designed to carry cargo, not people.In response to these tragedies, Redwoods took a strong position on the use of 12- and 15-passenger vans in 2004-asking our customers to discontinue the use of these vans in favor of safer alternatives. Again in 2004, a 15-passenger van transporting children for a youth-program rolled, killing Guadalupe, an 11-year-old girl enrolled in the program. Kaitlyn, a 13-year-old Counselor-In-Training, died in the crash. In 2003, a 15-passenger van transporting campers and counselors rolled over in a crash.
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