SIR: Your readers and those involved with the tragic French Alps crash may be interested to know that, under current UK legislation, the type of vehicle which crashed would not have to carry seat belts.
Not only that, but the only group of vehicles exempt from seat belts is also a group of vehicles which can be driven at 70mph, and use the outside lane of a motorway ... all other coaches are restricted to 62 mph and lanes one and two.
This is only one example of a mass of loopholes and absurdities in the new coach seat belts legislation. Another is that fully safety-tested seat belts will NOT pass the seat belt MOT, to be introduced in August. However, some fittings which will NOT pass the European safety test WILL get an MOT.
Coach operators are now campaigning to get the law to make more sense. As an industry, our over-riding concern is to improve safety, not to fob off the public with quasi-safety legislation, as is the case.
?Mark Williams,
News Editor, Coach and Bus Week,
(The PSV industry's news weekly).
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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