Sixty percent of the nation’s tour buses that are of the same model as the one destroyed in a fire on Tuesday last week failed government inspections, the Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) said yesterday.
The bus fire last week killed all 26 passengers onboard, including 24 Chinese tourists, a Taiwanese driver and a Taiwanese tour guide. In light of the accident, the highway authority ordered inspections of all buses of the same model — 20 in total — to determine whether there are structural issues with the model.
The DGH said 12 of them failed the inspection.
Photo: Lee Jung-ping, Taipei Times
Nine of the 12 buses that failed the inspection either had a fuse in the chassis that did not the match specifications used by the original manufacturer or storage batteries with power cords that connect to unknown electronic devices. The other three buses failed the inspection because of problems found in the lighting inside the vehicles and seat cushion shields.
The DGH ordered that the bus operators address the issues within a month and that they can only be used to carry passengers again if they pass a re-examination.
The DGH said that the 20 buses were all made by the same vehicle body manufacturer in Taiwan, with two of them owned by the tour bus operator that is now under investigation over the deadly fire.
The other 18 buses were owned by different bus operators, it said, adding that neither the vehicle body manufacturers nor the tour bus companies are allowed to change or modify a bus’ electrical design.
Although tour bus operators are banned from changing the electrical designs of their vehicles, the highway authority said that the specification and production of the chassis are regulated by the Vehicle Safety Certification Center.
Inspectors at motor vehicle offices do not check whether there are changes to the electrical design of the vehicle and can only inform bus operators that any change is illegal.
Apart from the electrical design, the inspectors also checked whether the emergency exits on the buses can be opened easily from the inside and the outside, the directorate said, adding that they were to make sure the emergency exit doors do not have built-in locks installed on them that would prevent them from being opened by passengers.
The results showed that the emergency exit doors on all 20 buses can be opened easily, and the built-in locks were already installed when they received the buses from the manufacturer.
Some of the tour bus operators had removed the built-in locks before the inspection, while others had them removed during the inspection, the DGH said.
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