Stagecoach to trial UK’s first budget sleeper coach service

This story can be read in many places, here’s a link to Stagecoach’s Press Release about the service.

The immediate question which sprung into my mind is what happens when, NOT IF, the bendy bus is involved in an accident? Seat belts have been mandatory for for years now. I’m pretty certain that the law does not allow passengers to use the beds in a motorhome or towed caravan when on the road. If you fly first class with a sleeper bed you’re woken before landing and must turn your bed into a regular seat and put your belt on.

I wonder what regulation allows this method of seatbeltless travel? Anyway, it’s not for me!

2 thoughts on “Stagecoach to trial UK’s first budget sleeper coach service”

  1. Malcolm Post author

    Hi Stephen, thanks for your comment.

    I hear what you say but, maybe, Jumbocruisers are differently designed to bendy buses? Aren’t Jumbocruisers designed to appeal to the less budget conscious market and therefore have a higher level of fitments? Megabus sleepers are ex-service bendy buses with what, looking at the picture, appear to be fairly crude bunk beds with no side rail, just an orange steel bar of the type used to delimit luggage space! As ex-service bendy buses I don’t know if the windows have been removed and replaced with aluminium panels. Also I don’t see any Jumbocruiser sleeping 24 in the space of half a bendy bus. Am I wrong there?

    I sleep on aircraft without a seat belt, I sleep on trains without a seat belt (once did the Trans Siberia from Moscow to Beijing) because they have far fewer accidents per passenger mile than road traffic. Nothing could persuade me to sleep in a Megabus, converted bendy bus, bunk as the bus went down the M6, M1 etc.!!

  2. Stephen Lee

    There are many sleeper coaches operating all over Europe – see http://jumbocruiser.com In all the years I can think of only two fatalaties (I realise two is too many) on such coaches and neither passenger was in a bed at the time.

    If you think about it, where the beds are, there are no windows to be thrown through and the bed will stop you being thrown around to a degree.

    There is no legal requirement for restraining belts in the bunks of such vehicles.

Comments are closed.