Coach Hire Safety

One of the many roles of VOSA: The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, is to monitor and grade coach hire companies on their potential safety. Ok it sounds dry, but you need to know about this government body if you want to get hold of up-to-date coach hire safety information. This agencies mission is to save lives, cut crime, protect the environment, value people, and deliver value for money. No small endeavor, and wrapped up in all of this mission statement is passenger safety. So what constitutes a safe coach?

VOSA, a government agency is responsible for maintaining up to date data on all PSV, Public Service Vehicles. Public Service Vehicles include coach hire vehicles as coaches carry passengers for an agreed cost. Coaches fall into the category of Large Public Service vehicles as they can carry more than eight passengers. To be able to drive a coach, the driver needs to be in possession of a valid PSV license. In order to legally operate a coach, the coach owner must have obtained an appropriate and valid license for the coach and in addition, the coach must be registered as a PSV vehicle.

The onus is on the coach hire operator to have valid documents. Registering a coach with the vehicle licensing department will instigate a record of the coach being transferred to VOSA. A sophisticated administration of quality checks at all levels of this monitoring system have had to be put into place in order to insure the quality of the information held on each coach, coach owner and all of his/her employees is correct and up-to-date.

The reason so much care has to be taken in recording and monitoring coaches and coach operators is due to the very nature of the industry. The coaches will require routine maintenance, the safety of a vehicle one year will not guarantee its’ road-worthiness 6months later. A good reliable coach driver on year may develop health problems the next, and so on.

The whole area of coach safety and the assessment of this complex issue is by its’ very nature, thwart with difficulties. What factors to consider when making this assessment has been debated between information analysts’, transport experts and transport providers for decades. In 2002 when the overseeing body, VOSA was given its’ overall powers of administering and enforcing standards for coach hire companies. In addition they are instrumental in the development of safety standards. These standards need to be disseminated to coach hire operatives. VOSA and agencies working for the organization are then responsible for assessing and ultimately, enforcing these standards, and ultimately feeding data back to the overall agency.

One of these changes was agreed and subsequently put into force in August 2008. This standard was “A Certificate of Professional Competence for Professional Bus/Coach Drivers”. Within this were changes to the way in which both bus and coach drivers are required to qualify for their license. The reason for this change was in order to standardize the licensing process throughout all the European Union Member states.

The New Fixed Penalty Scheme and Coding of Operators into Red, Amber and Green, and how this helps improve coach hire safety, will be discussed in subsequent articles.