Groupize.com Offers Best Practices for Safe Motorcoach Trip Planning

In light of the events of Friday and Monday in New York City, our thoughts go out to the families and to our industry colleagues.  Although we didn’t work with the coach company involved in the first incident, I have had the opportunity to meet the owners during a visit to their facilities and to see them at various trade shows.

Motorcoach Transportation remains a very safe mode of transportation. The motorcoach industry logs 750 million passenger trips each year in the United States, involving 1.8 billion miles.  During the period, 1999-2008, there were 54 fatal motorcoach crashes resulting in 186 fatalities, or an average of only 16 deaths a year, far less than other modes of transportation.

We will let the investigators decide what caused the unfortunate accidents, but as travel planning professionals, we can do our part to make coach trips safer for our guests. 

• Do not book departures too early in the morning.  Keep in mind that a driver must wake up 2-3 hours earlier than your departure time to allocate time to get ready, get to the garage, do the mandatory safety inspection and drive to your starting point.  A 5 AM departure time might mean the driver isn’t fully rested.


• Do not offer any overnight trips.  As a policy, Groupize.com, and many respectable coach operators refuse to do any trips, which involve overnight transportation.  It’s good business.


• Companies must carry a minimum of $5M of insurance.  Any company who carries $10-$100M indicates an operator who has large volume and expertise dealing with professional organizations.


• Ask to be added as a certificate holder on the carriers Certificate of Liability.  This is a service Groupize.com offers.


• Don’t push it!  The federal government has set maximum driving hours for a reason and they are not flexible.  As planners, do not design itineraries that are close to the legal driving hours.  Keep in mind that there might be traffic, food stops and that tour directors often try to include additional elements to your itinerary.  I’ve recently heard from one of our respected coach partner that they are refusing to take future business from a specific Tour Operator because their guides were pushy with the drivers and were asking them to break the law.


• Educate yourself.  With 3,500 mortocoach coach companies in North America, not all companies are equal. Visit http://www.safer.fmcsa.dot.gov/CompanySnapshot.aspx to see their safety profiles and insurance records.  We obviously can assist in the decision making process.


• Take the time to visit their garages and you will learn a lot.  We trust the DOT experts for the vehicle inspections, but as travel experts, we need to make the effort to visit their facilities.  If we take the time to do hotel site inspections, as an industry, we should also do garage inspections.  Groupize.com visits about 100 garages a year throughout the USA and Canada and keeps a photo library of their vehicles and garages.


• Some Operators specialize in certain type of work for their vehicles and drivers. Make sure it matches your needs.  For example, a limo company specializing in party buses and casino trips, is not the ideal supplier for an over the road coach tour.


• The most important advice is to stop once and for all basing your decision purely on price.  This is not a commodity.  Coach companies that charge more, usually pay their drivers more, have newer vehicles, carry more insurance, do their own maintenance and invest more in driver training and uphold industry leading safety standards.  An extra $1-$2 per person can make a big difference.

• Following Distance Alert - Reminds the driver to keep a safe following distance by indicating when the coach is following too closely to the vehicle ahead.


• Adaptive Cruise - When cruise control is on, AWARE automatically adjusts the cruise speed of the coach to maintain a safe following distance, taking into consideration the position of the vehicle ahead.


• Impact Alert - This feature will alert the driver if the distance between coach and vehicle ahead closes too quickly, giving the driver an opportunity to take action.