It happens so fast.

One minute, the van is loaded with student-athletes -- in prime health, with so much of their lives ahead of them, with so many plans for the future. They are napping, doing homework, listening to music on headphones, chatting about the evening's game or their plans for the weekend. Their uniforms and equipment are packed around them, perhaps even wedged over that seat belt that goes unworn.

The driver is a responsible senior student-athlete who sees quite a bit of playing time, but who has driven the van before and never had so much as a speeding ticket.

Then it happens. The van veers off the road and begins to roll. Those students -- their homework, their sneakers, their CD players, their lucky socks -- are tossed as though in a clothes dryer.

Several who were not wearing seat belts are thrown violently through the glass of the side windows and from the vehicle, striking the gravel shoulder at a high rate of speed. When the van finally rolls to a stop, it is crushed, missing several occupants and splattered with blood.

What happened? Perhaps it was because the driver was thinking about the game or because it's 1 a.m. and everyone was exhausted. Perhaps the roads were slick with ice, or a car unexpectedly slowed and turned in front of the van, leaving the student-athlete driver only a fraction of a second to react. Maybe the team was in too much of a hurry to get home to their own beds, encouraging the driver to speed. Or perhaps the driver was distracted by the jubilant occupants. No matter the reason, so many lives have changed.

If this type of an accident were an uncommon occurrence, it would be much easier to accept. Not every accident can be prevented, after all. But the scenario is all too familiar now. Six van accidents last winter resulted in numerous serious injuries and the deaths of five student-athletes.

Considering that thousands of student-athletes safely traveled thousands of miles last winter -- by 15-passenger vans, mini-buses, chartered buses and airplanes -- were the six van accidents statistically significant? Perhaps not. Perhaps the risk is no more than it ever was.

But if any good could come out of so many accidents, so many young lives affected, perhaps it is that athletics team transportation is now on the front burner like never before. Institutions are examining -- and in many cases, creating -- policies for team travel, with serious thought given to the unanswered question: What if it happened here?

An issue for everyone

One of the most alarming elements of last winter's accidents was that those teams were not doing anything unusual. They were doing something that hundreds of schools -- and thousands of student-athletes -- do every month. All of last winter's accidents involved 15-passenger vans -- a mode of transportation that many athletics departments use frequently.

It might be easy to assume that this issue is only of concern to smaller colleges, but it's certainly not. Small colleges may use vans more often for larger teams -- sometimes even sending a caravan of vans a long distance -- but even major universities use them to transport teams with fewer members or for smaller distances.

Some schools, like George Washington University, use vans on an almost daily basis to reach practice fields located off campus. DePaul University, which experienced an accident last year, uses vans for smaller teams and for shorter trips, as well as for transporting the soccer teams to a practice field off campus.

"I think everybody in Division I has to rely on van travel," said Jean Lenti Ponsetto, DePaul University's senior associate athletics director. "I don't know anybody who doesn't use them."

Sometimes athletics departments' decisions to use a 15-passenger van are purely a matter of economics. It's cheaper to lease a van -- or perhaps use one from a university motor pool -- than it is to charter a bus. And the vans' drivers don't have to have a commercial license, as is the case with those who drive buses, nor are they limited by law as to how many hours they can drive.

But other times the choice to use a van is based simply on scheduling, a desire to avoid missed class time or an effort to give the student-athletes more rest. The DePaul accident last winter involved a van of track and field student-athletes who were to compete in field events, which took place earlier in the day than the track events. The van was used to permit the student-athletes to leave earlier and return to campus earlier than those on the chartered bus.

Many athletics departments have rules that encourage bus travel rather than van travel. At DePaul, for example, vans are not used for trips involving a travel time in excess of four hours.

"The men's and women's tennis and golf teams almost always travel by van," Ponsetto said. "But if a trip is more than four hours, they fly. We look at the size of the team and make the determination. Anything over four hours (travel time), and we're usually going to fly or go by charter bus."

At North Central College, van trips are limited to those under 200 miles. "Anything over 200 miles in any direction, we take coach buses," said Walter J. Johnson, North Central's athletics director and a member of the Division III Management Council. "It doesn't eliminate our risk, but it limits it."

Austin College also tries to limit van travel.

"We travel by bus or by plane as much as possible," said Oscar C. Page, Austin president and a member of the Division III Management Council. "To do that, our athletics director works with our coaches to work out common schedules so the teams can use a bus instead of a van. We try to limit vans to shorter distances."

Timothy P. Millerick, athletics director at Austin, points out that many conferences are trying to schedule competitions to enable men's and women's teams to travel together, making it more practical to use buses.

"Sometimes coaches just have quirks and don't want to travel with other teams," he said. "But it makes sense to go together, and that just became our policy to do it whenever possible. And, if we go beyond a three- or four-hour trip, we usually try to go by bus."

The College of St. Benedict, a Division III women's school with an enrollment of 1,940, has slowly phased out the use of vans since a 1989 accident in which two members of the Muskingum College women's basketball team were killed. Now the school charters buses for nearly every trip for each of its 12 teams.

"That (accident) really hit home to us," said Carol Howe-Veenstra, athletics director and volleyball coach at St. Benedict, in an interview with USA Today. "We brought the (newspaper) articles into a meeting, looked around the table and knew it could have been our names," she said. "We've all put athletes behind the wheel, we've all driven when we were exhausted, by the nature of the beast."

The decision to switch from vans to charter buses increased transportation costs by around $12,000 a year, Howe-Veenstra said, noting that the school has met the expense by cutting costs in other ways. "We eat a lot of pizza. We pack a lot of lunches (for the trips)," she said.

Safer choices?

Short of eliminating van travel entirely, which simply may not be an immediate option for many universities and colleges, there are ways to reduce the risk of van travel. Perhaps the first step is a thorough examination of existing university policies. Risk-management consultants may be able to help with that review.

"We use risk-management consultants relative to our insurance program to examine high-risk areas," said Austin's Page. "And obviously student travel in vans is one of those high-risk areas."

At the suggestion of consultants, Austin has driving records on file for everyone who is eligible to drive a van or any other university vehicle. Even Page turns in a copy of his driving record every year.

"I'm not a big believer in consultants," said Austin's Millerick, "but sometimes when you bring in an outside opinion, it helps people swallow hard and make difficult choices."

Stephanie Faul, communications director of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, said that institutions can make many choices that will prevent accidents.

"These accidents (involving vans and athletics teams) are particularly tragic because they are so easily prevented," she said. "If institutions did three things -- require seat belts, require the driver to be well-rested, and require all driving to be done during the day and never from midnight to 6 a.m.-- that would prevent most of the problems."

Faul said many elements of team van travel increase risks tremendously.

"There are several factors that make this type of travel particularly high risk," she said. "The first thing is that many of them are traveling long distances. They are traveling at odd times, perhaps at night, and they are traveling after a full day of activities."

Faul also said that using younger drivers adds to the danger. Younger drivers are more likely to take risks; more likely to speed; more likely to disregard the need for sleep and thus drive while drowsy; more likely to be inexperienced drivers, especially when it comes to operating a large van or driving in inclement weather; and less likely to wear seat belts and enforce seat belt rules on passengers.

"For someone under 30, the most likely cause of death is a car accident," she said.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drivers under the age of 25 had the highest rate of involvement in fatal crashes of any age group.

Speeding and lack of experience combine to create additional dangers.

"Most young people are not used to driving large vans," Faul said. "And with the high center of gravity that these vans have, they don't handle like cars. A speed that might be acceptable in a passenger car is dangerous in a large van."

At DePaul, van drivers must be 25 years of age and an employee of the university. Sometimes that means assistant coaches drive, but sports medicine personnel or sports information personnel also may drive.

Faul said institutions should set policies about who can drive and under what circumstances.

"Ideally have an older driver, and make sure they are well-rested," she said. "It's a good idea to use someone who's older and who's not a member of the team or a coach.

"Require someone to be awake in the front seat next to the driver. They can observe the driver and make sure that person is not nodding off.

"And recognize that sleep is like air. There is no substitute for it. It's something our bodies need, and it's not something that you have any control over. Mandate rest stops. Triple-A recommends a rest stop every two hours; that would be an optimal schedule." (For a free brochure about the dangers of drowsy driving, see www.aaafoundation.org.)

Faul said institutions also need to require seat belt use at all times. "Use some kind of draconian punishment if you must (to enforce the rule)," she said. "Suspend anyone not wearing a seat belt."

At North Central, seat belt use is non-negotiable. "We discussed it after this last series of accidents (last winter), and we realized that the least we can do is require all of our student-athletes to wear a seat belt at all times," Johnson said. "If you don't wear one, you don't travel with the team."

Difficult choices

When it comes to team travel, many coaches too often find themselves in distracted states of mind or under pressure. Some coaches are driving when they are exhausted or when their minds are on the game, not the road. Other coaches may feel pressured to travel in the dead of night or through bad weather.

"From a coach's standpoint, I don't feel that I'm as good of a driver as usual when I'm on the way to a tournament or when I'm on the way home," said Sara Wakefield, the volleyball coach at Bluffton College.

"With volleyball, we're almost always coming home after midnight. We take two vans. So in addition to me worrying about driving, I have to worry about my student driving the other van. And none of my students have practice driving a big van."

Wakefield, who also was a student-athlete at Bluffton and who is finishing her term on the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee this year, would like to see someone other than students or coaches driving.

"From the SAAC's perspective, we don't think student-athletes should ever have to drive," she said. "We don't think it's safe. I think the safest option would be an outside individual -- someone who's not distracted by the game."

Austin has hired outside drivers before, and Millerick recommends the practice. "To drive our (rented) vans, you have to be 21 or older, which we think is a good idea," he said. "But that immediately reduces the number of people available to drive," he said, noting that the realities of that rule may mean that the senior goalie who just played for two hours is the one driving home.

"We've set aside some funds for such situations to hire people -- who are not competing -- to drive the vans." he said. "I think that's a good intermediate step."

Limiting driving at night, which Austin also has done, is another recommendation of safety experts.

"We'd rather spend the money on a hotel room than have the team pull an all-nighter," said Page. "To me, that's just common sense and using good judgment. It's hard on the coaches to drive, emotionally as well as physically. We don't have coaches who've just lost a ballgame driving all night to get the team back."

Weather precautions

Weather is another factor that often puts coaches in a tight spot. At DePaul, coaches seldom take vans at night, and they also monitor the weather.

"We tell our coaches to call ahead and check on the weather," Ponsetto said. "And I think they're pretty good about it. We want coaches to focus on their team, and not have to be worried about driving."

But the unexpected sometimes occurs, just like it did when it began to snow on the DePaul van halfway through a trip to Indianapolis last winter. The DePaul van accident -- from which everyone recovered -- was caused by snowfall, even though the coach who was driving was traveling at a reasonable speed.

When bad weather threatens or a coach at North Central is too exhausted to drive home, they have an additional option that they are encouraged to use.

"If there's ever any question at all about weather, or if there's ever any question about your physical condition, you stay -- period," Johnson said. "It's in writing in our department manual, and I stress that in an open meeting with the coaches at the beginning of each term.

"I'm willing to defend spending a few extra dollars to put up a team overnight. But I'm not willing to defend to anyone -- not the president, the trustees, the parents, anyone -- a decision to have a coach driving when he or she shouldn't have been.

"It's probably the one thing I fear the most as an AD, that we would somehow, sometime, put our student-athletes at risk on the road. You can't prevent every accident. If you're going to travel, there's going to be some risk. But I feel like it's my responsibility to make sure everyone is as safe as they can be, and that we make smart decisions."

A national solution?

Team travel is a national problem, so some have wondered why no national solution has been put forth. But are there solutions that would work for everyone? So far, the answer is no.

"The NCAA does not have any policies regulating athletics team travel," said Wallace I. Renfro, NCAA director of public relations. "The Association's members have thus far decided that those decisions are to be left up to individual institutions."

Renfro said the tremendous diversity of the NCAA's members would preclude many types of national policies.

"Institutions vary widely in terms of their budget sizes, the distances their teams travel and the size of their sports teams," he said, noting that many institutions' athletics administrators have decided to review team travel policies in light of last winter's accidents.

"Everyone is saddened by these accidents, and we encourage our member institutions to review their travel policies and speak with their insurance carriers."

Federal guidelines that prevent children from being transported by van don't cover college students (see story below), and there are those who believe that some type of national regulations would help.

"Given the recent team transportation accidents across college sports, I personally feel that some sort of (national) policy needs to be recommended as this is one of the more serious -- and life-threatening -- student-athlete welfare issues," said Spencer Cox, a former tennis player and recent graduate of Central College (Iowa), as well as a member of the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.

"We could consider maximum distances or travel times, and tighter control of student-athlete driving. The goal to keep team expenses to a minimum will always put pressure on coaches to keep trips as short as possible -- in other words, drive through the night.

"Speaking for the SAAC, we understand that team travel policies are regulated by the individual institutions, but we support continued discussion of this serious topic and the recommendation of certain minimum standards, if deemed appropriate."

Millerick has seen what can happen when schools don't have adequate funding to support their travel.

"I think travel safety is a huge issue, and it's because of funding," he said. "We are fortunate here at Austin to have (President Page's) support. For a lot of people in the trenches, buses just aren't an option. There are a lot of people doing (travel) on the cheap, and that's scary."

Wakefield is not optimistic that many institutions will address the issue unless they are forced.

"I think the only way is for there to be a policy from the NCAA," she said. "Nobody is going to spend the money unless they have to. I think it all comes down to money, and we shouldn't have to pick money over safety."

Picking money over safety could indeed be the most expensive choice an institution ever made.

Suggestions for safer team travel