Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/assuring-safety-in-bus-transportation/5014928/
There is so much confusion about van safety today that it will help to step back a few years and examine what brought us to the current dilemma. Over the past 35 years, as the early childhood field grew, transporting children became an important component of the services any successful center had to provide. At first, providers only made field trips. Gradually, trips to public schools were required to support centers' before- and after-school programs and summers became full of exciting travel. Passenger cars quickly gave way to station wagons and then to small vans. As demand for such vehicles grew among centers, churches, schools, and recreation departments, the major auto manufacturers adapted their cargo vans by putting in windows and rows of seats. Therein lies the root of the problem.Now, hardly a week passes when some van wreck isn't in the media. For example, do you remember the recent van crash in Memphis, Tennessee in April, 2002? In that accident a van drifted off the highway and crashed into an overpass bridge. The 27-year-old driver and four children ages six to nine were killed and two other children were seriously injured. And, who can forget what happened in Columbia, South ...