How safe are our Kenyan buses?

Years ago accident on Narok  road that killed over 40 people and the roof disintegrated has become and aye opener of how the bus bodies fabrications are done.In Kenya there are several body builders but the top are Kenya Vehicle Manufactures of Thika and Labh Singh Harnam Singh Ltd ,the largest bus and coach manufacturer in East and Central Africa among others.

To start with,in this country buses are built on commercial vehicle chassis which are usually have higher frame chassis than other commuter buses used in the world.This simply means that no dealer sells a chassis designed for a bus hence compromising the passenger comfort,safety and vehicle stability.

When we now come to the body building,you will find quite a number of  mushrooming inexperienced body builders who ignore the safety standards of commuter buses by making cheap body structures that even leak during the rainy seasons to save cost to some bus owners/operators to between 3 to 4 million shillings on the big buses.According to Kenya Vehicle Manufacturers there are set standards in the traffic act as well as Kebs bus standards which seems to have been ignored to cut cost but have brought in significant suffering to hard working Kenyans.Due to the greed,some opt to have top carriers on a weak body which is usually overloaded with goods instead of using the bottom cargo boots designed for intercity buses.This makes the bus to sway and swing on it's high frame at the bends always  losing control and stability.According to one bus builder who declined to be named,a normal bus should be about 12 feet high but then they extend the top carrier making the bus 13 to 14 feet high.Some bus operators like Easy Coach,Modern Coast,Mash Poa have realized the dangers of the top carriers and have done away with them.

The bus should always meet afew standards like,

1]Roll over protection

2}Front Impact protection

3}Side Impact protection ,

among others.During a bus or coach rollover without the above,the occupant will have a larger distance from the centre of rotation as compared to that of a car occupant. This is what makes a rollover accident extremely fatal and explains the previous statistics in the country. The side windows get broken, the risk of passenger ejection and injury increases. The most common body regions injured in a rollover, when no ejection occurs, are the head, the neck and the shoulder. Crash analysis indicated that injury in rollover crashes can be caused by the impact of the occupants on the side panel, on the luggage rack and also by the effects of occupant interaction

Currently there are safe buses in the country.Foton Buses introduced in the country but imported are coming with all the safety features including the roll over cast,ABS brake system,Three safety hatches on top of the bus,Six safety hammers to break the glass during an emergency among others.The buses are on a passenger chassis and have gone for clash test .They have met the European regulation 'ECE R66' .Foton buses cost of a 47 seater is going for 6.5 million while 57 seater is going for 8.6 million.This price could be the reason why bus operators go for the locally assembled which are cheaper.GM too have locally assembled safe buses.

Today the European regulation “ECE R66” is in force to prevent catastrophic
consequences of such roll-over accidents thereby ensuring the safety of bus and coach passengers .The purpose of the ECE R66 analysis is to
ensure that the superstructure of the vehicle have the sufficient strength that the residual space during and after the rollover test on complete vehicle is unharmed.
The envelope of the vehicle’s residual space is defined by creating a vertical transverse plane within the vehicle.The tests have also shown that the new
safety roll-bar structure assures controllable crash energy absorption which
in turn increases the safety of vehicle occupants.These are the standards which should be enforced in Kenya if we want to save Kenyans

 

by Karuga wa Njuguna