Road Rage
The Government's failures to meet its own commitments on road safety and to respond to repeated calls for safer school buses enrages the nation. By Hilary Curley, Colin Murphy and Vincent Browne
The Government has failed to meet its own commitments on road safety and failed to respond to repeated representations concerning safety on school buses. Whether this latter failure was a factor in the fatalities in the Meath bus crash has yet to be determined, but the overall policy failures on road safety are stark.
The issue of seat belts and overcrowding on school buses has been raised in the Dail on several occasions, most recently on 7 December last (see page 16). In the course of the most recent exchanges it emerged that although there has been an EU directive requiring the installation on buses by 2006, this regulation does not apply to buses manufactured before 2006 and as all buses used on school runs are old buses this will have no applicability for school buses for perhaps decades.
In the programme for government, the following commitments were made:
* improve standards of driving by establishing a training scheme for new drivers;
• introduce road safety and safe driving education in the secondary school curriculum;
• implement the penalty point system;
• introduce a new Road Safety Strategy to target speeding, drink driving, seatbelt-wearing and pedestrian safety;
• establish a dedicated Traffic Corps.
Not a single one of these commitments was met.
The promised new training scheme has yet to be delivered. A decision has been taken to establish an independent driver testing agency but the legislation providing for this has yet to pass through the Oireachtas.
Road safety is part of the primary school curriculum but is available only to those schools who provide a formal transition year course. The 'Staying Alive' programme deals with road safety with a concentration on safe driving, increased seat belt wearing, the dangers of excessive speed and drink driving.
The penalty point system has been introduced but there has been a problem with enforcement, which has been in part responsible for the reversal of the down-trend in road fatalities.
The promised traffic corps has yet to materialise.
Seamus Brennan, as Minister of Transport, published the promised new road safety strategy in September of last year, over two years late. The main target was to reduce road collision fatalities by 25 per cent by the end of 2006. "Achievement of the target will result in no more than 300 deaths per annum by the end of the period of the Strategy and will assist in the achievement of the longer term EU target," the Department said.
The main commitments of this delayed strategy were:
• the introduction of random preliminary breath testing;
• an increase in disqualification periods;
• a network of speed cameras to be deployed;
• the implementation of the penalty point system;
• the enforcement of regulations on seat belts, speed limits and drink driving.
Random breath testing is still not provided for (breath testing may take place only where there is a "bona fide" suspicion of drink driving, according to the Garda press office). The speed camera initiative has proved ineffective, with several of them not working and very few actually installed. As stated, the penalty points system has been compromised.
There was a steady and impressive reduction in road deaths from 2000 to 2003 (see table) but that trend has been reversed with a 10 per cent increase in 2004 (375 fatalities, as compared with 335 in 2003) and a worsening situation so far in 2005. The number of people killed in the first five months of this year was 153, up from a figure of 144 for the same period in 2004.
More people are killed on the roads of Ireland every year than would lose their lives, were there to be 13 Omagh-scale bombings. (29 were killed in Omagh on 15 August 1998, the worst single atrocity of the Northern troubles).
On the basis of road deaths per 100,000 population, Ireland's rate, at 9.6 in 2002, the latest year for which international comparative figures are available, is seventh out of the EU 15 (excluding accession countries).
The National Roads Authority published a report on fatal road accidents for 2003 (the latest report available) and it noted that in that year 335 people were killed on the roads. The worst month for fatalities in 2003 was May. January and September jointly recorded the fewest fatalities. Twenty-seven per cent of road fatalities took place between the hours of 9 pm and 3 am, the hours most strongly associated with drink-driving.
The worst days of the week for fatalities during 2003 were Saturdays and Sundays, accounting for 39 per cent of fatalities. Twenty-eight per cent of all fatal collisions in 2003 occurred on urban roads, with the remaining 72 per cent occurring on rural roads.
Almost 60,000 people are killed in road accidents across the European Union. An objective was set by the European Commission of halving the number of people killed on the roads across Europe by 2010. There is no update on whether that objective is on the way to being achieved because the latest statistics refer to 2002 only.
The main causes of accidents across Europe were identified by the Commission in its European Road Safety Programme published in 2004:
• excessive and inappropriate speed, the cause of about a third of fatal and serious accidents;
• consumption of alcohol and drugs or fatigue - drink-driving is responsible for about 10,000 deaths each year;
• failure to wear a seat belt or crash helmet is a major aggravating factor in accidents: if the rate of seat belt use could be increased everywhere to the best international rate, more than 7,000 lives would be saved each year;
• the lack of sufficient protection provided by vehicles in the even of an impact: analysis of accidents shows that if all cars were designed to provide protection equivalent to that of the best cars in the same class in the event of an accident, half of fatal and disabling injuries could be avoided;
• high-risk accident sites (black spots);
• non-compliance with driving and rest times by commercial drivers;
• poor visibility of other users or an insufficient field of vision for the driver.
The responsibility for reducing road traffic accidents rests primarily with the member states. The Commission however expressed dissatisfaction at the apparent lack of interest by member states in taking steps to realise this objective. "There has been an enormous gap between the member states' ambitious declarations of intent and the very modest provisions actually adopted..." a commission publication stated in October 2004.
The EU directive mandating the wearing and fitting of seat belts in buses by 2006 will have little immediate effect on the Irish school bus fleet.
The directive does two things: it requires that seat belts be fitted where worn, and that all new buses be fitted with seat belts.
The average age of Bus Eireann's fleet as a whole is 16 years; the average age of the school bus fleet is 11.5 years; the bus involved in the Meath tragedy was 12 years old.
Whether or not these buses are well-maintained (and Mary Hanafin said on 25 May that "old does not necessarily mean unsafe"), there is no scheme to fit seat belts to old buses.
And "new" buses acquired by Bus Eireann are commonly bought second-hand, with the newer buses being used in the regular fleet, and the older buses they replace being used in the school transport scheme. (Bus Eireann calls this "cascading" their buses through the system.)
Responding to criticisms after an accident in 2002 when three children were injured when they fell through the rear window of a bus in Galway, Bus Eireann noted that "the present level of funding for school transport does not provide for the purchase of new school buses".
Comments on this issue by Government representatives have often been vague on these details. The Minister for State at the Department of Transport, Ivor Callely, said last October that "the adoption of stricter standards at EU level in relation to both the fitment and wearing of safety belts in new vehicles and the phasing out by May 2008 in new vehicles of the so-called three for two concession (which allows for a greater number of seated children than there are seats) will lead to enhanced safety". Contrary to this, there is no indication that new EU-wide seat belt standards will have any impact on school bus safety here.
Fitting seat belts to old buses (so-called "retro-fitting") may seem like an obvious answer. According to Jan O'Sullivan, this would cost approximately ?38,000 per bus. With a fleet of dedicated school buses of (number and calculate total cost).
However, Sile de Valera, Minister of State in the Department of Education, said that "the practicality of retrofitting on safety grounds is questionable.
"I believed this was possible until I received oral reports from those with engineering experience in Bus Éireann. They explained it was neither possible nor wise to attempt to retro-fit buses with seat belts because this could be more dangerous and could lead to more accidents. The best way to supply seat belts on buses is at the manufacturing stage."
The three for two concession, which allows three children be seated across two seats on a bus, is enshrined in legislation. This applies to all public buses for children up to the age of 15. However, within the school transport scheme, an exception is provided for which extends the age limit for the 3:2 concession to 18. So effectively there are situations where Bus Eireann is legally entitled to carry young people who may be fully grown (that is, 17 years old) on a 3:2 basis.
In practical terms, this means carrying 78 students on a single-decker bus with 52 seats.
In situations where a private contractor owns and operates the local school bus for Bus Eireann, this can mean that the contractor has to carry this amount of students, based on the budgeting for the scheme.
According to Sile de Valera, speaking during the week, and Ivor Callely, speaking last October, the 3:2 concession is to be phased out over the next three years. Sile de Valera said the concession only applies to 14 per cent of students. With 138,000 students using the school transport scheme, over 19,000 are carried daily on a 3:2 basis. To phase this out will require something like 120 extra buses.
Sile de Valera said that "abolishing the three for two seating arrangement" would cost ?18 million over two years. This makes no provision for seat belts.
In order to have the school transport fleet seat-belted, existing buses would have to be replaced either with brand-new buses or with second-hand buses which have seat belt pre-fitted. De Valera estimated that this would cost approximately ?100 million, with "additional costs when private contractors are taken into account".
Bus Eireann commonly acquires its "new" buses by buying second-hand buses from "various British cities", she said, but "that procedure is to be discontinued since those buses would obviously not be fitted with seat belts". Looking elsewhere would provide logistical difficulties, however, as sourcing a large number of new right-hand drive buses would be difficult, she said.
The school transport fleet (consisting of some cars for special needs students, minibuses and buses) consists of 3,000 vehicles. Only 600 of these are owned and operated by Bus Eireann. The remainder are private. Bus Eireann says it replaces its school bus fleet at a rate of 100 per year, meaning that the entire fleet is replaced every six years, though these are generally replaced with buses from the main fleet. The Bus Eireann spokesperson had no information on rates of replacement of private vehicles, which make up the vast majority of the scheme.
Both Bus Eireann and the ministers responsible have repeatedly emphasised two things as evidence of bus safety: the fact that buses have to be certified annually for roadworthiness; and the low accident rate.
The roadworthiness certification process does not cover the inside of the bus, however - unlike the National Car Test, for example. Theoretically, the seats on a bus could be hanging loose and the bus would still pass its certification.
And though Bus Eireann reportedly has an extremely good safety record, accidents may be more prevalent than assumed. Speaking last October, Ivor Callely said:
"To put the school transport safety record in context, school buses cover about 40 million miles a year. While even one accident is one too many, the overall accident rate is less than one accident per one million miles of operation."
At an accident rate of one per million miles of operation, going by Callely's figures, there would be some 40 school bus accidents per year. Callely was speaking at the annual presentation of Safe Driving Awards to Bus Éireann school bus drivers. To qualify for the award, drivers must not have had a preventable accident during the year.
Safety reviews of the school transport scheme have been underway without apparent developments for some years.
In March, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin reported that "the review of the school transport scheme within my Department is at an advanced stage. The steps required to bring the matter to an early conclusion are under active consideration at present."
In December 2002, then Minister for Education Noel Dempsey said responses to a public consultation document on school bus safety were "being reviewed with a view to identifying a range of specific proposals for implementation".
The Oireachtas Committee on Education produced a report on school transport in November 1999 which recommended that the 3:2 ratio should be abolished on all second level buses.
"It is unacceptable to have pupils who are physically similar to adults having to try to fit 3 to a seat, which is only suitable for 2 people. This situation has led to serious overcrowding on some school buses and has major safety implications on school buses."
It noted the dangers involved in having older students in particular being overcrowded on buses.
"Overcrowding permits the development of anti-social behaviour such as bullying and physical aggression, which cannot be detected and addressed by the drivers."
The Committee also noted that "while both the Bus Éireann and private operators receive a DOE Certificate of Road Worthiness, which certifies the mechanical worthiness, no account is taken of the suitability on the passenger carriage area".
"Most of our school buses are very old... Many of the seats are defective and in some cases, windows are defective and/or missing and roofs leaking."
A further safety issue is raised was the storage of school and gear bags. With buses already overcrowded with students, storage for bags (which could be laden with books, and potentially dangerous in a sudden impact situation) was inadequate.
"Storage capacity under current seating provision is not provided in the same capacity or ratio. In viewing the amount of gear, equipment, lunches and books which students require the lack of adequate storage facility could be a safety hazard."
However, an earlier report more baldly states the bottom line on the issue. The School Transport Review Committee reported in January, 1998 that it had "no hesitation in accepting the existing 3:2 arrangement" and said there was "no reason to believe that this arrangement places passengers at an unacceptable risk in the light of the cost implications of changing it".
"If... policy makers decide that the 3:2 arrangement should be abandoned on services for older pupils (or, indeed, for all pupils), this could be achieved only with a very significant expansion in the budget of the scheme."
Dail exchanges on school busses
Denis Naughten (Fine Gael) : asked the Minister for Transport his plans to review the regulations governing school buses; if he will review the 3:2 ratio on school buses; if he has satisfied himself with the level of overcrowding on post-primary buses; if he has reviewed this situation; and if he will make a statement on the matter
Minister of State at the Department of Transport (Mr. Callely): All buses, including school buses, are required to comply with the standards set out in the Road Traffic (Construction, Equipment and Use of Vehicles) Regulations and the Road Traffic (Public Service Vehicles) Regulations. Under the 3:2 provision, three children may be reckoned as two passengers when determining the passenger capacity of a bus being used to carry children to and from school or school-related physical activities.
The Department of Education and Science has overall responsibility for the administration of the school transport service, while Bus Éireann is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the service. I am advised that the Department of Education and Science is satisfied, on the basis of the information available from Bus Éireann, that school buses are being operated in accordance with the requirements of the road traffic law and that great care is taken to ensure that the loading of school buses does not exceed the maximum legal carrying capacity on each vehicle in use.
EU Directive 2003/20 provides for the mandatory wearing of seat belts by passengers in a wide range of vehicles, including buses fitted with seat belts. The implementation of the directive, which must take place from 2006 onwards, will effectively remove the three for two concession for new buses used as school buses after 2007.
In June 2003, the European Commission published proposals that provide, inter alia, for the mandatory fitment of seat belts in buses and coaches at manufacturing stage. Under the proposals it would be a requirement for the registration, sale and entry into service of new buses and coaches, from 1 January 2006 that their safety belts, restraint systems, seats and the anchorages for these would conform to the technical requirements specified in the proposed directives. Ireland actively supports the proposed measures with the intention that they will be implemented at the earliest possible date after their adoption to maximise the benefits of the requirement to use seat belts where they are fitted in vehicles, including in school buses.
In 2002 my Department published a discussion paper on school bus safety. A range of possible safety related enhancements covering vehicles, passenger related measures, and the road traffic environment in which school buses operate were identified in the paper. The purpose of the paper was to give the public an opportunity to put forward their views and suggestions on enhancing school bus safety. The responses to the discussion document are being reviewed by my Department with a view to identifying the most cost-effective approach to enhancing road safety for school transport taking into account the obligations and timing of EU requirements and proposed requirements.
Mr. Naughten: The Minister of State crammed as much into his reply as children are crammed into buses. Is it the case that the new EU regulations will not be implemented on the Irish school bus fleet until at least 2023 when passenger vehicles from the Expressway fleet transfer to the school bus fleet? The last new school buses dedicated to the school transport service were provided in the 1960s. In light of that and given that 78 children are crammed into 52 seater buses, there are more regulations and standards governing the overcrowding and transportation of cattle than there are for schoolchildren. This issue needs to be addressed today, not in 2023.
Mr. Callely: It will not be as late as 2023. In regard to the Deputy's phrase about children being crammed into buses, I reiterate that Bus Éireann is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the service. I am advised that the Department of Education and Science is satisfied on the basis of the information available that school buses are operated in accordance with the requirement of the road traffic law and that great care is taken to ensure that the loading of school buses does not exceed the maximum legal carrying capacity on each vehicle in use. That is important. I indicated to the Deputy that the directive on the three for two concession must be implemented from 2006 onwards, that is, on all school buses after 2007.
Mr. Naughten: Are they new school buses?
Mr. Callely: Yes. I have had discussions with Bus Éireann on the issue of school buses. It has informed me that in recent years it has taken obsolete buses off the road and replaced them with a more modern fleet. It is satisfied with the current fleet and the proposal to enhance and develop further the number of buses and their carrying capacity as well as the safety requirement on such buses.
Mr. Naughten: The law is the difficulty in that it allows three 17 and 18 year olds to be crammed into two seats on a bus. Is that acceptable? Is it acceptable that three adults are crammed into two seats and that their schoolbags and sports bags are also crammed into the bus? Some 78 children are crammed into a 52 seater bus. Does the Minister of State believe the law is correct in allowing that number to be carried on a 52 seater bus? Does he have any plans to amend the law given that there will be no new school buses in either my lifetime or that of the Minister of State?
Mr. Callely: I do not know where the Deputy's questions are leading.
Mr. Naughten: I am trying to reduce the 3:2 ratio.
Mr. Callely: I have already answered the question on the 3:2 concession. The safety record of school transport in Ireland is good compared with other modes of road transport and stands up well to international comparisons. On the issue of 3:2 concession and including bags as well——
Mr. Naughten: I will give the Minister of State an invitation to come and see some of these school buses if he wishes.
Mr. Callely: The Deputy appears to indicate there may be an issue in regard to the safety record.
Mr. Naughten: Will the Minister of State take up my invitation?
Mr. Callely: EU Directive 2003/20 provides for the mandatory wearing of seat belts by passengers and the directive must be implemented from 2006 onwards.
Mr. Naughten: In reality it is 2030.
Mr. Callely: That will effectively remove the 3:2 concession.
Mr. Naughten: In 2023