With yesterday's publication of Reported Road Casualties GB 2008, regular reader RC169 compares England & Germany… and following a serious crash on Tuesday finds English C & U regs might have something to offer our continental brothers...
In my posting on single versus dual doors almost a year ago, I referred to the fact that all buses and coaches in Germany, other than the smallest van-derived minibuses, had at least two doors on the nearside but no exit door on the offside. This applies to all vehicles regardless of use: local bus services, private hire, excursions and extended tours. I also mentioned that it was only then that I had recognised that the second door was, in fact, also a substitute for the emergency door that is usually located in the offside of British vehicles, as well as being used as a normal service door. This was despite my having travelled on buses in Germany on various occasions over the preceding 25 years; obviously I am not very safety-conscious. I did at that time, however, speculate that this might be a potential hazard.
Two doors it may have but they are both on the nearside with nothing on the offside or rear. Compare this to a UK small PSV of similar capacity (e.g. Mercedes Vario) with offside emergency exit. This Iveco Daily is operated in Germany by Taxi Meier
Subsequently there have been two serious accidents involving buses or coaches, which prompt me to ask the question whether the Germans have the right idea, or the UK. In the light of these tragic cases, it seems to me that it might be worthwhile for the German authorities to consider whether provision of an offside emergency door should be required in future.
On Tuesday 22 September 2009, a bus travelling downhill near to Radevormwald in North-Rhine-Westphalia apparently ran out of control after pulling away from a stop. It came away from the road on a left-hand bend. The bus fell approximately 65ft and came to rest on its nearside, partly in the River Wupper. All doors were blocked. The driver and four passengers died; six were seriously injured. Reports indicate that several passengers were trapped in the bus. Roof hatches appear to have been opened, although these are considerably smaller than an emergency door. However, in this case, arguably, they might have been easier to use even than an offside emergency exit. Despite comments in the news reports to the effect that the vehicle was a coach, it does in fact appear to be a modern Setra low-floor single deck bus, typically used on rural and interurban services, such as it was operating at the time of the accident. Additional news reports state that the vehicle was delivered in 2008, and the driver had been working for the business for at least ten years. The operator was a former private operator that has recently been sold to the Wuppertal municipal operation.
On 4 November 2008 a coach carrying 32 passengers (mostly pensioners) caught fire on the motorway A2 near Hannover. The fire is understood to have resulted from a technical defect in the lavatory, which was located adjacent to the rear door, and spread rapidly. The driver was able to bring the coach to a halt on the hard shoulder, adjacent to a wall, but 20 of the passengers were unable to escape in time, and perished in the flames. In this case, an offside emergency door would have given passengers an alternative escape route not adjacent to the source of the fire, but would have led to the possibility of passengers jumping out into the inside lane of the motorway, with fast moving traffic. However, one would hope that drivers of passing vehicles would have had the sense to give a wide berth to what must have been an obviously serious vehicle fire. A commentator to one of the internet news reports on this incident suggested that smoke detectors should be fitted in the lavatories of coaches, as there were, in his opinion a couple of potential fire hazards, including cables from the water heater, some of the materials used, and passengers smoking.
These two incidents have, alone, resulted in the deaths of 24 bus and coach passengers within a period of less than 12 months. I am not sure of current comparable figures for the UK but I know from yesterday's Reported Road Casualties GB 2008 there were six passengers (one of whom was involved in this crash) and zero drivers who died in 2008. Bear in mind that Germany makes relatively less use of buses and coaches (denser rail network, trams and underground railways in major cities, and no equivalent to National Express), and the industry is tightly regulated, the German figure seems disturbingly high for a modern, west European nation.
As a poignant footnote, the town Radevormwald is no stranger to transport accidents - in 1971 a major rail accident cost the lives of 46 people, many of them schoolchildren returning home from an excursion.
3 comments:
Two points of clarification. In the Radevormwald accident, it appears that some of the passengers who were killed were trapped under the bus. They appear to have been thrown or fallen out of the vehicle during its descent down the slope and the bus then came to rest on top of them. This is what the media report linked in this post hints at. There has been no indication that passengers were trapped inside the bus.
In the Hannover coach fire, a factor contributing to the high number of fatalaties appears to have been that most of the passengers were elderly and less agile. This appears to have made it difficult for them to escape because they could not move swiftly. How much a UK-style floor-height emergency door would have helped in this situation and whether passengers would have risked using it given the proximity of traffic, can hardly be more than speculation.
Fair points. The reports about the Radevormwald accident are, perhaps inevitably at this stage, not entirely consistent, and others that I had read did refer to at least one survivor 'in the wreckage'.
It is, of course, speculation whether any particular changes to the specification of the vehicle would have made a difference in these particular circumstances. However, it is not unreasonable to consider whether, if the circumstances were only slightly different to these specific examples, could such fittings have helped to save lives or reduce injuries.
My recollection of German buses and coaches is that they all have emergency hammers at some place in the passenger compartment and at least one off-side window is marked as emergency exit and is intended to be smashed if the need arises to permit trapped passengers to escape. Presumably, if the position of the crashed bus doesn't permit that window to be used, any other window can be smashed instead.
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