#12 PASSENGER VEHICLES DRIVERS#
#12 PASSENGER VEHICLES DRIVER#

The crashes are usually college sports teams, church groups, and that sort of thing, where maybe the van doesn't get used much or maintained well, and the drivers are not experienced, maybe tired, the vehicles can be overloaded, and people don't wear their seat belts. There are tons of these vans on the road doing airport shuttle service and that sort of thing, and they drive hundreds of thousands of miles.

Obviously if you check the tire pressure, don't overload it (not likely with only 7 people) and drive carefully, you'll be fine. Pretty much anythign you get from a major rental fleet is going to be a later model with the advanced safety features. Also, later models with stability control are less likely to roll, but some of the inherent risks still exist. You can find out more by googling 'NHTSA 15 passenger van' and 'NTSB 15 passenger van'.

#12 PASSENGER VEHICLES DRIVER#

There are other factors (overloading, driver inexperience, etc) that play into the risk associated with these vehicles. They're not 'difficult' to drive, but 12/15 passenger vans, especially the 15 passenger variety, have been the subject of special NTSB and NHTSA studies, because they have a higher rollover rate and higher fatality rate than other vehicles, and are frequently found to have underinflated tires (this might apply to all cars but the vans have a higher center of gravity so the potential impact of a blowout is worse). Usually you just get a 12 or 15 passenger van with rows of seats like the airport shuttles use. And no, I wouldn't trust too many of the other people to drive, and will be renting the van in my name with one other driver. If it were up to me I would rent a minivan to feel safer, but I know that wouldn't be a very comfortable ride for seven adults. And I already had a dream that we went tumbling down the side of a mount in the van, and my last thought in the dream was that we all had our seat belts on. Especially since part of the driving will be somewhat in the mountains and the extra weight and never handling anything that big scares me. When you rent a 12 passenger van from a rental agency, is it a conversion van, or just a van that hasn't been modified at all? I guess that would depend just wondered if anyone had ever rented one and knew. Frankly, I'm scared to drive something that big, but I will definitely have to drive a lot of the trip.

The biggest vehicle I have ever driven was a minivan, and that was fine. We are renting a vehicle to take a 1200+ mile round trip family road trip, seven people (all adults), and my husband thinks to allow for luggage and extra passengers part of the trip (visiting family), we should rent a 12 passenger van.

12 passenger vehicles