Coach safety 'improving'
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THE GOVERNMENT is pressing ahead as fast as it can on the question of coach safety, Transport Minister Lynda Chalker has assured MPs.
A European working group has been discussing coach safety and progress has been made on two fronts — the provision of anti-roll bar equipment and also the question of strengthening seats.
But Mrs Chalker warned there was no question of introducing shoulder belts, although she told MPs that there was nothing to stop operators putting at least a lap belt in a public service vehicle.
However, the working party has been actively pursuing research on seat strength to hold passengers in. Earlier, Junior Transport Minister Michael Spicer told MPs that the safety record of coaches had been improving all the time. During the past decade, bus and coach passenger fatalities had halved and coach safety was now about equal to that of rail travel.
Mrs Thatcher has given her backing to the idea of roll bars in coaches.
Last week, two St Albans' children, Kevin Greenfield and Susan Beddall, presented Mrs Thatcher personally with a 3,500 signature petition calling for roll-over bars in coaches.
The two children raised the petition following the death of five of their school friends and a teacher in a crash in France.