Crash spotlights safety issues with big limos
A limousine crash over the weekend that killed 20 people has focused attention on rules governing the ungainly vehicles, which can be as long as 30 feet and are exempt from the crash standards that apply to new cars and trucks.
The white stretch Ford Excursion limo lost control Saturday and barreled through a stop sign and slammed into an unoccupied SUV in Schoharie, New York, about 40 miles west of the capital, Albany.
The driver wasn’t properly licensed and the limo had failed a state safety inspection last month and shouldn’t have been on the road, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, according to The Associated Press. The state ordered the company, Prestige Limousine, shut down.
Stretch limousines are often converted cars or SUVs. Lengthening the vehicles and adding new seating configurations can undercut the federally mandated safety features designed by the original manufacturer, according to crash-worthiness experts.
“Once you start modifying the vehicle, you pretty much undo all of that,” said Raul Arbelaez, vice president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s vehicle research center in Virginia. “When a vehicle is stretched, the main thing that’s taken into account is to make sure that it is structurally stable and roadworthy in order to carry the occupants and handle the load and be durable, not necessarily to withstand any crash forces.”
The addition of several thousand pounds of additional frame and sheet metal from the longer body and the added weight of carrying more than a dozen passengers also puts far greater strain on a stretch limo’s brakes and tires than they were designed for, he said.
“There’s a bit of a Frankenstein approach, where a vehicle is chopped up and put back together with parts that were not originally designed for that vehicle,” said Deborah Hersman, president of the National Safety Council advocacy group and a former NTSB chair. “It’s clear that they don’t have the same safety design standards as those same vehicles had before they’re stretched or modified.”
The fatal crash highlights a number of shortcomings in such vehicles, including crash worthiness, seat belt use and the patchwork of state and federal regulations that provide inadequate oversight, Hersman said.
“This is an area where we clearly have a gap that needs to be addressed and it’s incumbent upon state policy makers and the feds to work together and address this,” she said.
One issue the NTSB agency will be looking at is New York’s lack of a requirement that limo passengers wear seat belts, Sumwalt said. Investigators still hadn’t determined whether passengers were restrained as of Monday morning.
Three years ago, after four women died and two others were seriously injured in a limo accident on Long Island, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for an investigation into federal safety standards.
“It’s clear that stretching a limo can put the wheels in motion for a terrible tragedy,” Schumer said then in a press release. “All too often, stretched limousines lack basic safety protections, including not enough side impact air bags, rollover bars, appropriate exits and more.”