|
Injured in a 15-Passenger Van Accident?
If 15-passenger vans are heavily loaded with either people or cargo, the center of gravity rises substantially. The NHTSA studies have determined that the dangers of rollovers increase when vans have more than 5 passengers, and even more when they have more than 10 passengers. Additionally, passenger vans with more than 10 passengers has a rollover rate nearly triple that of passenger vans with only 5 passengers.
|
Some of the common causes of 15 passenger van rollovers is when the passenger van leaves a rural road. In this situation, the van will most likely overturn when the front of the van hits a ditch or embankment or attempts to travel over soft soil. The difference between the height of the front tires versus the back tires causes the top heavy van to rollover, especially when the van is traveling at generally acceptable posted speed limits.
The driver of the passenger van may be tired, fatigued and/or driving too fast for the road conditions. As these vans are generally used for long trips, someone traveling through New Jersey's roads such as Route 80, the NJ Turnpike, or the Garden State Parkway may become tired and may fall asleep at the wheel. This may cause the sleeping driver to lose control of the speeding van which could result in the van overturning or rolling over. Similarly, the van may cross over into oncoming traffic resulting in a side-impact collision with a semi-tractor trailer which generally results in the van rolling over on its side.
Lastly, the driver may attempt to overcorrect while steering the 12 passenger van. This may result when the driver panics, attempts to avoid an emergency on the road, or upon losing a tire (possibly because of a tire defect). Rafael Gomez, Passenger Van Rollover Accident Attorney is here to answer your Bergen/Passaic/Hudson County passenger van accident questions.
Passenger Van Rollover Accident
Passenger vans are frequently involved in rollover accidents. These types of auto accidents are so common because the vehicles are designed to transport up to 15 people and their gear. This results in the vans becoming very top-heavy---where any horizontal force can result in the passenger van rolling over and seriously injuring the passengers inside, and possibly even resulting in their death.
The most frequent causes of a New Jersey passenger van rollover accident has resulted from another vehicle, commonly a car, motorcycle or truck cutting-off or coming into close proximity with the passenger van. The driver of the passenger van unintentionally turns the steering wheel too abruptly resulting in the passenger van rollover. The injuries sustained in a 15 passenger van rollover may be very severe, as some of these vans fail to provide a secure seatbelt for all of its passengers.
15-Passenger Vans: High-Riding Death Traps
A group of church women on a shopping trip in Texas…a 6-year-old boy en route to his swimming class in South Carolina…a track team from Prairie View A&M University…another from DePaul University…the Wisconsin-Oshkosh swim team… the Kenyon College swim team... a group of Long Island high school students on their way to see the Grand Canyon…
All had one thing in common: they were riding in 15-passenger vans that crashed with all too tragic – and common – results. Many were killed, many others maimed and disfigured in what are among the most lethal vehicles on the road today.
For one thing, the vans, so popular for transporting pre-school, school-age, college and church groups, are involved in rollover crashes more often than all other vehicles. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) calculates that the vans overturn more than half the time they are involved in single-vehicle crashes, compared to 33 percent of the time for other vehicles. Surprisingly, 81 percent of all fatalities in 15-passenger van crashes occur in just such single vehicle rollovers.
The death toll can be measured by the stark data in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS):
| • |
Fifteen-passenger vans were involved in 376 fatal rollover crashes in the 17 years from 1982 to 1999. Those crashes killed 581 – six of every 10 persons riding in the vans. |
| |
|
| • |
The vans were involved in single-vehicle crashes more often than other vehicles: 280 of the 376 crashes involved only the van. That means three of every four vans that overturned did not collide with another vehicle. |
| |
|
| • |
More than half of the 2,513 occupants in those single-vehicle rollovers were killed (432) or received incapacitating injuries (881). |
| |
|
| • |
Even using safety restraints was no guarantee of safety: 39 of those killed and 159 of those seriously injured were wearing seat belts or were in a child safety seat. |
| |
|
| • |
The death rate appears to be rising: about half of the crashes (186) and well over half of the fatalities (299) occurred between 1993 and 1999.
|
|
