I-Team

By Maggie Mulvihill, I-Team Producer
(WBZ) Despite their ban in 41 other states, Massachusetts still allows its school children to be driven to and from school in cargo vans outfitted with seats - vehicles federal officials have called among the most unsafe on the roadways today.

Public and private school students from Arlington, Lexington, Kingston, Newton, Marlborough, Wellesley, Wakefield and many other communities are being driven in the 12 and 15 passenger vans, some to and from school and others also to school activities.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued repeated safety warnings specifically about 15-passenger vans because of their high propensity to rollover if overloaded.

But NHTSA has also expressed concern about the 12-passenger vans which it stated in a November, 2004 safety report are "similar to vans configured for 15 passengers in terms of design, handling characteristics and safety problems."

Currently, 41 states ban students from being driven to and from school in both 12 and 15 passenger vans.

". . . Any parent who has a child that rides on a van . . . you are gambling with their life," said Donald Tudor, transportation director for the Department of Education in South Carolina, where students must ride in school buses.

"Passenger vans are designed to transport cargo. If you want to perceive of your children as cargo then I could understand why you want to put them them in a passenger van," Tudor said. "But if you want to perceive them as the most precious thing that can be transported I question why you would put them in anything other than a vehicle that is specifically designed to transport them."

School transportation safety advocates like Tudor argue the core structure of the vans renders them a far riskier mode of transportation for students when compared with school buses.

Unlike the vans, school buses feature such protective measures as roof rollover bars, thick steel sheets on both sides of the vehicle, closely spaced high-backed padded seating, flashing lights, stop arms and laminated glass windows that is far less likely to shatter in a crash.

Because the vans have a higher center of gravity, they are considered less stable than other vehicles, such as cars.

Their large size also can pose problems for inexperienced drivers when faced with sudden turns or unexpected maneuvers.

Federal tests have also shown the vans have repeated problems when their tires are underinflated.

"Why would you stick your precious children in these things," said Tim Bardessono, whose 15-year-old daughter Corinne was killed in 2003 when the Ford E-350 she was riding in hit a patch of black ice as she headed to a school-sponsored Upward Bound trip in Washington state.

A year later, the state paid the Bardessono's $1 million. The family settled other claims against the van's driver and Ford Motor Co. for undisclosed sums.

"I saw the vehicle, what it looked like after the accident and how it's not even possible to protect your children in these vans," Bardessono said. "Just imagine each spin as it comes around and another child gets broke loose and there's nothing to protect them . . . . it's just horrible."

While car manufacturers in recent years have begun adding new safety measures to the vans such as electronic stability control, student transportation safety advocacy groups, including the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, urge schools to use buses, not large vans, to transport pupils.

The extended version of the vans, such as the Ford Econoline 15-passenger vehicle, are considered most hazardous, particularly when loaded to capacity.

Between 1990 and 2002, there were 1,576 15-passenger vans involved in fatal accidents, resulting in 1,111 of their occupants being killed, according to NHTSA.

In many of those accidents, the occupants were not wearing seat belts.

The vans, which state law also allows day care facilities, special needs programs and camps to use, have been involved in ghastly roadway accidents in Massachusetts.

In 2002, a young Hyde Park mother and her infant daughter were killed when a driver for a Mattapan day care center slammed his 15-passenger Ford Econoline head on into her car.

Franklin Speed Jr. was acquitted of motor vehicle homicide by a Suffolk Superior Court jury in 2003 after presenting evidence the van was inherently unsafe.

But Massachusetts students continue to be transported to and from school and to after-school events in the vehicles which school transportation safety experts in other states label "death traps."

At Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School in Charlton, students until this week were being driven in 15-passenger vans to work sites during the day, said Superintendent David P. Papagni. The vans also towed a 10-foot utility trailer filled with the students tools, he said.

Shop instructors with regular Massachusetts drivers licenses, not specially trained operators, drove the students to and from their job sites, Papagni said. Papagni said he regularly filled the vans to capacity.

"I'm putting 12, 13, 14 in them at any given time," said Papagni.

Papagni said the school has a pristine safety record with the vans. Asked about the federal warnings about 15-passenger vans rollover risk when filled to capacity, Papagni said.

"We've just been very fortunate, I guess," he said.

The vans are also being used regularly by private schools and those catering to special education and handicapped students. The vans are an economic alternative to regular size-school buses, in some cases costing one-third of the typical $60,000 bus pricetag.

Last August, six students from Dearborn Academy in Arlington were hospitalized after their 1998 GMC G2500 Savana crashed on Route 2.

The Dearborn driver, Aaron King of Cambridge, was later cited by state police for failing to stay within marked lanes as he drove the children from their school to Walden Pond.

Dearborn continues to use the vans today.

This month, the I-Team observed the vans taking students home from school and to after-school appointments at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton in GMC Savanas built to hold at least 12 passengers.

Dr. Theodore H. Wilson III, president of Schools for Children Inc., which runs Dearborn, did not respond to the I-Team when asked if school officials were aware of safety concerns relating to the 12-passenger vans.

Instead, he issued the following statement, which reads in part: "It is our policy to only use smaller vehicles with a capacity of 10 (including a driver) to transport our students. . . there is no higher priority than the safety of our students."

Dearborn uses 2000 and 2001 GMC 2500 and 3500 Savanas, vans built years before General Motors began adding stability control to limit rollover risk.

Automobile safety expert Sean E. Kane said it is irrelevant whether the van is a 12 or 15 passenger van - all are far less safe than school buses.

"Regardless of whether the vehicle is a foot shorter, whether it holds eight occupants or 10, the reality is that these vans do not meet the same stringent requirements that the federal standards set out for school buses," said Kane, head of Rehoboth-based Safety Research & Strategies, Inc.

Massachusetts is risking its schoolchildren's' lives by not changing the law to ban the vans, he said.

"Only after tragedies do we look back and see what could we have done better, and I think it's time where we do it the other way around," Kane said.

Some schools using the vans said they are beginning to phase them out because of safety concerns, such as the special education LABB program in Lexington, said program director Patrick Barbieri.

But others said their vans are used almost daily for field trips or to transport athletes.

At Silver Lake Regional High School in Kingston, students are driven daily by their coaches to athletic events such as wrestling, tennis and golf matches in the school's leased Ford E-350, said athletic director Bill Johnson.

Susan Downs, office manager of JSC Transportation Services Inc. in Waltham, which provides vans for numerous school districts, said because she has them retrofitted to seat eight passengers and a driver they are safe.

"We don't have any plans to stop using them because they comply with Massachusetts law," Downs said.

Car dealers have been prohibited from selling new 15-passenger vans to schools for student transport since the 1970's unless the vehicles meet federal school bus safety standards.

In 2005 Congress also banned schools from purchasing the vans. But the I-Team found that Bay Path officials in April purchased a 2007 15-passenger Ford van from MHQ Municipal Vehicles in Marlboro under a state contract.

Superintendent Papagni, who said he has bought several new vans in the past three to four years, said he did not know such a sale violated federal law.

As a result of the I-Team's investigation, NHTSA officials have opened a probe into the sale and this week sent letters to MHQ and Bay Path notifying them, NHTSA officials confirmed.

On Tuesday, the Registry of Motor Vehicles ordered Papagni to stop using his new vans to transport students and he's taken them off the road, he said.

Paul Dagilis, fleet manager at MHQ, did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.

Registrar Anne L. Collins acknowledged Massachusetts needs to change its laws to require students to be transported on buses.

"These vehicles are pretty much built to be cargo vans, not for the transportation of children," Collins said. "By comparison, school buses have tons of safety built into them and that's a safer place for kids to be."

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)