Archives for National Bus Trader

Since driving a 20- or 25-ton motorcoach is touted as so being difficult, it is only fair to ask why so much carnage, and so many law suits, occur apart from collisions. In particular, the number of incidents occurring at or near stops seems largely disproportionate to the perceived simplicity of handling things when the bus or coach is stationary. Magnets for Mayhem Bus and coach drivers have alternatives to discharging passengers into or onto potholes, cracked curbs, snow, ice and wet cement. Yet: Under dim streetlights, a transit driver discharged an elderly passenger, in the outer lane, adjacent to

One of the most fundamental concepts of liability is that the defendant “takes the victim as he finds him.” Apart from hospitals and nursing homes, few areas of modern life confront, litigate and test this principle as often as public transportation. Damages and Damaged Taking the victim as one finds him is unusual, as a legal construct, in that it can cut both ways – and often does: An elderly individual, disabled person or child is obviously easier to injure than most other passengers. I have been involved in two cases where passengers with osteogenesis, or “brittle bone disease,” suffered

As we all know, public transportation is a fiercely competitive business, even in operating environments which are subsidized. But the failure to make tiny investments in safety can be costly in the courtroom. Mill Wise and Gram Foolish With a cartridge she likely failed to fill the night before, or perhaps engorging too much cheesecake for breakfast, an elderly diabetic boarded a motorcoach for her 1200-mile overnighter while stowing her insulin in the luggage bays. While her son had more opportunities to request its retrieval than he exercised, no driver fully accommodated those he made, and his mother progressed from

A superficial glimpse at recent coach purchases with respect to ADA compliance timetables might suggest that the motorcoach industry is trying to “slide under the bar.” But a more detailed look suggests that our industry is actually raising it. To soften a cliché, necessity is at least a distant cousin of invention. In the transit industry, full accessibility begat wheelchair lifts, and the ADA begat low-floor buses and convertible seats. In the motorcoach industry, the ADA further begat quick-change track seating systems. With these changes, the notion that wheelchair accessibility would reduce passenger carrying capacity was thus reduced to those

When things go awry on a bus or motorcoach trip, a range of parties may be found liable, including operating companies, lead agencies, prime contractors, subcontractors, schools/churches/clubs, travel agents, leasing companies, bus manufacturers, dealers, maintenance facilities, drivers, tour guides and mechanics. One should not be terribly surprised if and when the tentacles of litigation ensnare a regulatory agency. If the incident is related to malfunctioning brakes, steering or suspension systems, co-defendant operating companies and manufacturers often duke it out in court, with blame seesawing between design, engineering, production and/or quality assurance versus maintenance and/or inspection. But many equipment problems are

At some point in time and space, responsibilities to passengers must end. Yet it is surprising how differently these responsibilities are defined from one state to another. It is even more surprising how, within a given state, these responsibilities are defined so similarly among modes with strikingly different characteristics. Not surprisingly, these state-to-state distinctions have a profound impact on liability, and how it is approached. These distinctions affect how both plaintiffs’ and defendants’ strategies are developed and focused. They affect how facts are interpreted, and cases resolved. And they strongly influence both settlement tendencies and their outcomes. Bus Stop Size

I recently assisted a major national bus contractor in a case where its school bus allegedly plowed into a pickup truck waiting to turn left into a driveway from its single traffic lane. The bed of the pickup was totaled, with deformation all the way to the driver’s compartment. While not paralyzed, the whip-lashed driver was severely injured. Neither the driver of the bus nor any of its passengers were injured. Malarkey and Mumbling The plaintiff testified that she was waiting to turn left, with her truck’s brakes on, for over a minute, because the high-speed oncoming traffic was heavy

As generally understood, the concept of life cycle costing involves the life of the vehicle. Generally overlooked is its relationship to the lives of its passengers. Principles and Practices The central principle of life cycle costing is that, while a vehicle that lasts longer may cost more to purchase, it generally costs less to operate. For this to be true, of course, one must spread the purchase price over the vehicle’s life span, along with the appropriate operating costs. An important corollary of this principle is that, when the vehicle’s life is extended beyond a certain point, it costs more

With our Lower Manhattan offices in the former shadow of the World Trade Center, my view of our disasters is essentially the “neighborhood view,” and affords me a different perspective on events than those monitoring them from afar via secondary sources. It also affords me an opportunity to observe their contexts. So it was with the recent Blackout. Revisionist views of history are generally insightful. They can also be sobering. Miracles and Misinformation As they did after September 11th, New Yorkers displayed a civility unimaginable in most of the World’s major cities. Throughout the Blackout, the police arrested only 50

On August 12, 2003, in yet another bold step in its commitment to cut motorcoach-related fatalities in half, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration capped off a marathon, five-year examination of small vehicle safety by releasing final rulemaking: Safety Requirements for Operators of Small Passenger-Carrying Commercial Motor Vehicles Used in Interstate Commerce (49 CFR Parts 390 and 398 [Docket No. FMCSA-2000-7017, RIN 2126-AA52; 47860 Federal Register/Vol. 68, No. 155]. In summary, all commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) designed to carry between nine and 15 passengers (including the driver) must now comply with the same regulations governing motorcoach operations (with two exceptions