FORD E350 15 PASSENGER VAN DRIVER
FORD E350 15 PASSENGER VAN SERIES

“To keep everything proper, we did away with all of our older buses and went with the vans.”Īll they did was trade one danger for another.Ĭhrysler launched its 15-passenger van, the Dodge Ram Wagon, for the 1971 model year. Ford Motor Company introduced a competitor in 1979. “The law and the insurance company got really hard on the larger buses,” Roberts said. Louisville-area church leaders thought the vans would be safer, said Jack Roberts, pastor of Louisville's Maryville Baptist Church. Many churches turned to 15-passenger vans, said Curt Mitchell, of Carpenter Bus Sales in Franklin, Tennessee, a major church transportation sales company. The Carrollton tragedy prompted more safety features in newer buses and regulatory reform: Kentucky ordered all private buses, including church buses, to undergo annual inspections.īut old school buses soon fell out of favor. Operating costs were high, and congregations struggled to find parishioners with newly required commercial driver's licenses.

FORD E350 15 PASSENGER VAN DRIVER

history when a drunken driver slammed into a bus carrying 67 members of the Radcliff First Assembly of God on their way home from an Ohio amusement park. Those dangers conspired to cause one of the worst bus tragedies in U.S. Kentucky, meanwhile, had no effective laws or regulations aimed at ensuring church buses were adequately maintained or safely operated. Echos of the Carrollton crashĬhurches around Louisville and across Kentucky commonly use the vans, just as they employed surplus school buses 30 years ago, when 27 people died in a fiery crash on Interstate 71 near Carrollton on May 14, 1988.įor years before the Carrollton deaths, federal officials and industry experts also issued repeated warnings about inherent dangers in the old school bus' design: an unprotected gas tank. Salliotte is one of 600 people killed in single-vehicle rollovers involving 15-passenger vans since safety warnings were first issued 17 years ago. Yet many churches around the country still use the old vans to haul kids to swimming pools, take parishioners to services or deliver members to conferences and revival meetings. And at least 28 states prohibit public schools from using them to transport students. A major religious denomination advises member churches to avoid them. Some insurance companies refuse to cover them. Federal officials have issued repeated safety warnings to carmakers and the public. Transportation safety officials have known since 2001 that 15-passenger vans like the E350 are prone to roll in a crash when loaded with people. The jury also found the First Baptist Church of New Port Richey negligent for not keeping seat belts in the van within reach. One was a teenager who had to repeat a year of school because of brain damage. Salliotte and the driver, who also died, were among five people thrown out as the van tumbled. The van flipped, and passenger Michalanne Salliotte, 44, was tossed from the vehicle and crushed on Feb. The left-rear tire on the 2002 E350 had shredded. That vehicle, the E350, dominated the large-van market for years.īut a Florida jury in March blamed that same make and model van for a woman’s death, granting her four children and husband nearly $20 million in damages. He blamed himself, not the van - and his superiors agreed.

FORD E350 15 PASSENGER VAN SERIES

Watch Video: Ford test-drive video of E350 15-passenger vanĪ Ford Motor Company employee test-driving a 15-passenger van flipped it while swerving through a series of cones in 1990.

Ford e350 15 passenger van