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December 8, 1999


The price of life

COACH holiday companies are literally buying time to jeep their tours on the roads of Europe - but the end price could be lives.

That was the conclusion of an undercover report for BBC Radio 5's Move It programme last night.

Leeds-based reporter Lesley Hilton took on the mantle of intrepid television reporter Donal MacIntyre to travel 1,800 miles in four days on Christmas shopping trip to markets in Germany.

Lesley, whose investigation was prompted by reports from another coach driver, was horrified by what she saw.

"When drivers exceed speed limits on the continent they face spot fines," Lesley said. "They accept that paying the fines is a cost they have to bear if they are to keep to their exceedingly tight schedules."

And, Lesley said, it is the individual drivers who take the risks and take the rap.

During her four-day break, Lesley was faced with a court saying she'd "kill" a driver who wanted to take a break so he could stay within his "working time" limits.

That incident occurred on day three. The 36 trippers, mainly from Yorkshire on a tour promoted as a "readers' offer" by an evening paper, had been picked up late in Koblenz. It was raining hard and the traffic was heavy, Lesley said.

"The driver said he'd have to take a break of 30 minutes unless they were back at the hotel within a hour," Lesley said.

"The courier said she'd kill him if he did. So, he ended up driving far too fast along riverside roads, even crashing a red light because there was nowhere he could pull in. We got back to the hotel 15 minutes after he should have finished work. The courier was putting lives at risk."

The four-day tour - which began on November 30 - started in Otley, West Yorkshire, and called at Bradford, Milton Keynes and Leighton Buzzard to pick up extra passengers. Reporter Lesley, posing as a teacher, but laden with secret recording equipment, joined the coach at Bradford, just before 1am on Tuesday.

The tour was organised by a Gloucester company, but using a coach hired from a firm in County Durham. A courier from Gloucester accompanied the Geordie drivcer and passengers predominantly from Yorkshire.

Their 20-hour journey took them south on the M1 to a service area for a driver change, then around the M25 for a Dover-Calais channel crossing. After driving through northern France and Belgium, they arrived at a small village hotel near the German town of Cochem at about 9pm.

"Many passengers don't realise what is happening," Lesley explained. "Many sleep or are able to relax. I deliberately sat at the front so I could watch what was going on."

During two days visiting the markets of Trier, Bernkastel, Koblenz and Rudesheim in the Rhinelands, Lesley witnesses several occasions when the driver should not have been overtaking or when he was exceeding German speed limits. And, rather than putting tachograph discs in place when starting work, the driver only installed them when passengers were aboard and he was ready to drive off.

The coach company's only response, one driver told Lesley, was to tell drivers off, but take no further action.

A five-year-old girl who had been sitting behind the driver going south on the M1 at the journey's start was told by the first driver that German law banner children from such seats. She was there for the entire four days.

But it was on the way home that the dangers were greatest. The passengers were scared, Lesley said, when the driver reversed the coach back along a German motorway slip road after taking a wrong turning. He was, Lesley explained, trying to get from one motorway to another without a map.

After a stormy channel crossing and delays caused by a P&O strike, the coach hit the M25 at 7pm on a Friday. From her seat at the front, Lesley watched as the driver steered the coach with one hand in the peak hour traffic as he talked on a mobile phone held in the other.

The driver was so tired that a wing mirror was pulled off the coach when he hit a tree at a motorway service area on the homeward drive north.

The trips seem no holidays for drivers. One complained that the tour operators screwed down the coach companies too much on costs; they simply tried to do too much each day, Lesley Hilton was told.

Another traveller, a veteran from previous trips organised by the same operator, told how a driver had fallen asleep at the wheel of a coach speeding along the M1 near Sheffield. Many passengers had not noticed until he coach began weaving dangerously across the carriageway. Only when they started shouting did the driver wake up and regain control.

Now, both the tour operator and the coach company have been reported to the Government's official transport watchdog body.

Copyright Adam Christie © 1999. Originally written for the Sunday Sun, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.