By Staff
Athletic Management, 16.3, April/May 2004, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1603/wuvantravel.htm
In February, a highway crash killed two players on the Navarro College men’s basketball team and injured seven others as they were returning to campus after an away game. This tragedy was the latest in a series of accidents involving sports teams and 15-passenger vans, a trend that has caused a growing number of schools to re-evaluate the safety of traveling in these vehicles. For some, this has led to increased safety measures. For others, it has meant phasing out the vans altogether.
Last fall, Central Michigan University decided that eliminating 15-passenger vans was the best way to address safety concerns, despite the fact that many coaches considered them the most economical and convenient way to travel. According to Derek van der Merwe, CMU’s Assistant Athletic Director and Director of Compliance, his athletic teams had been renting the vans on a regular basis, but now travel by bus or in 8-passenger minivans, which they use only for trips within three hours of campus.
"It’s being proactive," van der Merwe says. "It’s really looking at the data and the safety issues that have been raised nationally, and saying ‘How do we want to respond to this?’
"We had coaches who spent a whole day coaching their team, and then would drive back from a site," he continues. "To us, that person having to pay attention and be responsive all day long, and then jump into a van in the middle of winter to drive back to campus after an event is an unreasonable expectation."
The department also realized that safety questions were making the vans more difficult to insure. "We were looking long-term and saw that more and more insurance providers were phasing out coverage, so we felt that now was the time to do this," van der Merwe says.
As CMU coaches made the transition away from 15-passenger vans, they had to adjust both finances and travel logistics. "From a budgetary standpoint, taking buses as opposed to the vans is harder with the limited resources that we have," says Head Wrestling Coach Tom Borrelli, whose team had frequently used two of the large vans for its 20-member travel squad.
In addition to lower costs, the vans offered traveling teams more versatility at away competitions. "When you’re at a tournament, you have guys wrestling at different periods of the day, and with the vans, one coach can take a group back to the hotel where they can rest and get ready for their finals," Borrelli says. "With a bus, everyone has to do everything at the same time, so it’s tougher for individual sports."
Understanding the difficulties that coaches have faced, the athletic department at CMU will be keeping a close eye on how the new policy affects team travel. "We’re going to evaluate the impact on our programs on a continuing basis," van der Merwe says. "It’s not ‘Okay, you’re going to have to deal with this.’ It’s ‘How can we do this effectively within our current budget and operations?’ And we feel that the benefit for our student-athletes surpasses any of the drawbacks of this decision."
Other athletic departments are choosing to continue using the large vans, but are putting more safety precautions in place. At the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, where all sports teams use 15-passenger vans for some trips, Athletic Director Dan Swalga has taken steps to minimize the risks.
"We have a very rigorous program of safety checks, training for our drivers, and we are cognizant of all the safety issues," Swalga says. Every Pitt-Greensburg van driver must pass a certification program that includes a background check, safety instruction, and a road test administered by the university police. Student-athletes over 21 may become van-certified, though in most cases experienced coaches handle the driving on road trips.
Swalga also works with the university’s maintenance department to ensure that the vans stay in optimal shape. "We go well beyond the annual state inspection," he says. "Just about every week during the sports seasons, someone checks the brakes, looks at the tires, and takes the vans out to test them, to recognize if they need something."
They also make sure that the vans are never overloaded with people and equipment, a main contributor to increased rollover risk. And when bad weather makes van travel potentially hazardous, Swalga doesn’t hesitate to put his teams on a chartered bus.
The potential danger posed by 15-passenger vans is well-documented by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which has issued several official warnings about their use. NHTSA studies have concluded that when the vans are filled to or near capacity, the odds of rolling over during an accident are almost 30 percent, nearly three times greater than when they are lightly loaded. Because of this high risk, federal law prohibits the sale of new 15-passenger vans to elementary, middle, and high schools to transport students, but no such restrictions apply to colleges.
The federal government is currently working to implement stricter rollover testing for the vans, and to increase the side-impact and roof-crush resistance standards that must be met by auto manufacturers. In addition, some 2004 models of 15-passenger vans are being equipped with state-of-the-art Electronic Stability Control systems to improve handling and decrease rollover risk during an accident.