Lawmakers Urge Review of Rules for Safety of Vans

In the aftermath of the deadliest automobile accident in Orange County history, local lawmakers Tuesday called for a review of safety regulations for cargo vans used as passenger vehicles.

State Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), a member of the Senate Transportation Committee, has asked for a staff review to determine if state regulations need to be improved.

“It’s unfortunate, but generally, it’s when you have an accident that it puts the focus on this situation,” Bergeson said.

State Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) said he also plans to look into vehicle safety issues, because “I cannot imagine this will be the last we see of this” type of hazard.

A Senate Transportation Committee consultant said, however, that there is no evidence that converted cargo vans are more hazardous than regular passenger vehicles, and that tougher laws would be difficult to enforce.

California Highway Patrol officials said Tuesday that, contrary to initial reports, the church van involved in Santa Ana’s accident--in which eight died and 11 were injured--had not been inspected as state law requires of any vehicle used as a bus. Had the bus been inspected, according to Glenn Litscher, a supervisor with the CHP’s Motor Carrier Safety Unit,it would have been judged unsafe and ordered off the road.

Among the violations detected after the crash was the discovery that seats placed in the cargo area of the van were not bolted down.

“We would have put a great big sticker that said, ‘This vehicle is not to be operated,’ ” Litscher said.

But while the state does not allow children to ride in the backs of pickup trucks, or allow motorcyclists to ride without helmets, officials concede that the law governing cargo vans does not cover all potentially dangerous situations.

If the vehicle involved in Sunday’s accident had been a family or van-pool van, and not related to the church, it would have fallen into a murky area of the law that does not require safety inspections or prohibit retrofitting the vans once they leave the manufacturer.

“A family could have taken a regular cargo van and stacked all the kids in the back to go to a picnic and then crash, and there’s nothing to prevent that,” Litscher said.

In the accident, the victims were not wearing seat belts and were thrown from the van as it spun numerous times after being broadsided by a pickup truck.

But even under the state law regulating buses--defined as vehicles carrying more than 10 persons for compensation or being used by nonprofit groups, but excluding families or van pools--seat belts are not required because of a dispute over whether they pose a hazard in larger vehicles. However, seat belts are required of vehicles being used as normal passenger vans.

The Senate committee’s consultant, Mehti Morshed, said staffers have not found that cargo vans pose a particularly great safety problem.

“Even if you do something (to pass a new law), is it enforceable?” Morshed asked, pointing to the difficulty of trying to regulate vehicles once they leave auto plants.

In fact, the state Legislature earlier this year relaxed the standards slightly, transportation committee staffer Steve Schnaidt said.

“The way it was, you could not transport the neighborhood kids to the grocery store,” Schnaidt said, because a non-family group automatically fell under the “bus” inspection and licensing requirements if there were more than 10 occupants. Under the amendment, he said, vans that are not used for profit or nonprofit organizations now can carry up to 15 people.

Federal transportation officials said their rules are directed at manufacturers and do not place restrictions on what owners can do once they drive them off the sales lot.

And because the state regulates traffic and vehicle safety issues, city governments are preempted from imposing tighter guidelines, law enforcement agencies said.

That leaves the responsibility with the state Legislature and the CHP, which handles the inspections of commercial and nonprofit vans used as “buses.”

Litscher said the need for stricter enforcement is greater than most people think. While the CHP attempts to inspect all known bus operators at least once every 13 months, operators do not usually submit to the test until after an accident has occurred or they are spotted on the road by patrolmen. CHP records show that 843 buses of this type were inspected in 1991.

In addition to churches, Litscher said, dance or musical groups, hotels and airport shuttles are common users of these vehicles. Often, he added, investigators have suspected that operators claim to limit the occupancy to 10 persons in order to avoid state scrutiny, but then add extra seats.

“This is common knowledge,” he said. “They know if they have one driver and nine seats . . . it falls out of the regulations. We have no control over that. The only thing we have to do is hope on the honor system.”

But one solution suggested by the CHP supervisor is that the state require operators to display a certificate inside the vehicle showing that the van has passed inspection.

“There’s many, many, many that do not comply,” Litscher said.