Starting the day with some mildly horrifying news...
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My sister runs sound for the choir at her college. They recently left on an 8-hour trip to Washington, and arrived 26 hours later.
The reason? Two popped tires, one of which obliterated part of the college van's cooling system. Thankfully they weren't far from the house of a pastor who is helping organize the trip, and this pastor has a friend who is a mechanic. According to said mechanic, the van's front tires were from 2010 and the rear tires were from 2000. In his own words, that van was a deathtrap, and if those ancient tires had blown out they would've lost control and likely died.
My sister and the rest of the choir got to stay in a fancy hotel, laugh it off, and have a good time while the van was being fixed, and I'm happy they got a good group bonding experience out of it, but holy crap it's terrifying that the college kept that van so poorly maintained.
Apparently cutting back on maintenance is what they think is a normal way to make their budgets work, and that's completely unacceptable, especially when you're giving your own students a poorly-maintained deathtrap with two tires older than the passengers!
A freaking college of all things should be smart enough to know that preventative maintenance saves money in the long run and running things into the ground is wasteful... but this college isn't just being irresponsible with their vehicles, this is reckless endangerment! I'm angry that anyone though this was okay, and I'm just thankful no one got hurt because of it. This could've gone so, so much worse.
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@awesomeaustinv Letter to the editor of the newspaper reviews on public review sites such as yelp or anything they don't have control over so the situation stays public. Their PR people will of course ask and demand things, but they are in no position to demand anything after risking the lives of people.
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@awesomeaustinv No excuse to have tires over 10 years old on an actively-used college van. Hope the person in charge of maintaining their fleet gets fired
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@atfsgeoff my money's on the problem being higher up the food chain.
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@GrindIntoSecond Speaking as someone who used to be active in such matters, what they will most likely do is remove the van as a group transportation benefit and save even more money. Admin universally sucks.
I've seen things that you could not comprehend..without a couple of drinks
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@AestheticsInMotion said in Starting the day with some mildly horrifying news...:
@atfsgeoff my money's on the problem being higher up the food chain.
If the fleet manager was aware of ancient / unsafe tires and couldn't afford replacing them, the van should not have been allowed out on the road.
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@AestheticsInMotion My mother was a college administrator, and while pressure to save money was always there, she was also frustrated by lower-level people just deciding that there was no money to fix things that needed to be fixed and thus not pushing for what they did actually need. A tough balance, but I would guess the higher ups would be horrified about sending kids out in an unsafe vehicle to save a few hundred on tires. The lawyers would probably be even more horrified.
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@awesomeaustinv That's terrible. Did they actually get to do anything at their destination?
My school's vans always seemed well maintained, though some of the student drivers left something to be desired. For a choir I would be worried about church vans which always seem to be some of the oldest, worst maintained vehicles on the road (though I'll admit the Korean church I live next to has modern Transits that look fine from the sidewalk), but colleges are usually not as cash strapped.
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@facw @atfsgeoff said in Starting the day with some mildly horrifying news...:
@AestheticsInMotion said in Starting the day with some mildly horrifying news...:
@atfsgeoff my money's on the problem being higher up the food chain.
If the fleet manager was aware of ancient / unsafe tires and couldn't afford replacing them, the van should not have been allowed out on the road.
The fleet manager should have been aware and pulled the van from rotation, the god-knows-how-many individual mechanics that inspected it over the years should have done the same, and absolutely anyone that got behind the wheel including the driver for this particular trip should have done an inspection and refused to drive based on that inspection. If it has twenty year old tires, that's just the beginning of the mechanical problems. No excuse for this to happen at any level and they're all responsible—but again this type of screw-up permeating multiple ranks tells me without a doubt that the root problems stem from higher up the food chain.
2006 R55 AMG
2021 701 Enduro
2013 Hayabusa
1995 Miata -
@awesomeaustinv If the twenty year old tires passed the eye test it seems they could save some money by just renting a vehicle when they need it.
I had a similar experience when I went to drive some kids to a field trip. The TPMS light came on after a few miles. I stopped by a QT to fill her up, but the tire wouldn’t hold air. Swapped the spare and it was also flat. Pulled into Discount and they threw me up on the lift right away. I had eight kids with me, all on the spectrum, and they did great. They all watched and helped when I swapped the tire out.
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@atfsgeoff My concern is that the problem comes from higher up, and the bean counters at the college think skimping on van maintenance will free up money for other things.
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@Mr-Ontop As much as removing provided transportation sucks, I'd rather they provide a safe van or no van at all. Surely someone could provide or rent a van safer than this. Heck, renting a van would've cost less than the repair bills and cost of hotel rooms for everyone in that van.
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@awesomeaustinv Were the tires tenured?
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@facw It's a private college, not sure how that affects things, but I know for a fact they have more money than a typical church.
Thankfully they had planned to spend multiple days at their destination so they're at most a day late. It wasn't a competition or anything, IIRC they're performing at a camp or something.
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@AestheticsInMotion Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if they don't even have a fleet manager, they just have vehicles, and the administration is incompetent with maintenance.
I am interested to find out what kind of van it was, that seemingly works somewhat competently despite 20 years of extremely lax maintenance.
