Cheap New York travel fares may save money but cost you your life
Money saving is on the minds of many New Yorkers these days as families find that the flow of money is not as swift as it may have been 10 years ago. Online sites and companies that offer deals on discount travel are becoming vastly popular when people still want to travel, but cannot do so at a high cost.
The curbside bus industry is one of those operations that offer incredibly low fares for interstate travel, but some safety experts say that it may cost you your life. According to a National Transportation Safety Board study, the curbside operations have a much higher fatal bus accident rate and violate a much larger number of safety violations.
We have discussed the New York bus accident that took the lives of 15 people and injured another 18 in March as they were on their way home from Connecticut. Another accident occurred just a couple months after that which resulted in the deaths of another four passengers and injuring 50 more en route back to New York’s Chinatown.
Both of those accidents involved curbside bus corporations. The first accident involved a bus from the operator World Wide Travel, the second was a bus operated by Sky Express Inc. Both accidents stirred a serious response from safety experts and the Department of Transportation.
According to the study, there were 23 serious interstate bus accidents this year alone. In those accidents, 33 people lost their lives and 452 others suffered serious injury. Inspections conducted by state and federal investigators found serious safety regulation violations in the discount operations. “It’s clear that the curbside discount bus industry isn’t as close to safe as the traditional bus industry,” said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York.
Just because lower operational costs may allow some bus companies to offer discounted fares generally lower than $30 does not mean that safety should go out the window. So why does it? Our next post will look into some of the reasons that these discount curbside buses may be riskier than the traditional ones.
Source: Associated Press, “Curbside buses have higher fatal accident rate,” Joan Lowy, Oct. 31, 2011
