Last month I read of several accidental deaths in RV Resorts across America. This is so horrendous! Folks are visiting to enjoy some time away, an extended vacation, or they're full timers seeing America, and then suddenly tragedy happens.

A few accidents involved an RV backing up over a human. Another was hit by a car leaving the park. Several children have been injured, but mostly it has been adults.

These accidents have a way of turning into nasty lawsuits, but even more important, what can we do to prevent such catastrophes from happening?

Many parks have adopted an escort service to guide the new guests to their site, and help with parking their rig. This is also good for the park as it keep folks from running all over the grass, visiting other sites on the way to theirs by cutting through, and remodeling fence posts. It also shows you where the guests had problems: tight turns, low limbs, parked cars, etc.

Escorts may also start your guest's visit off on the right foot by making sure power, water, and cable are working.

An escort protects the other guests by making sure they and their vehicles are out-of-the-way. At least a half dozen times a year the site I was scheduled to pull into, had a car parking on the site. The escort can also shoo away the children and adults who want to see a new RV or just curious. They can stop traffic, as well as detour golf carts and bicycles. Pets often jump up on the dashboard when you arrive at a park to check it out. Children see the pets and start following the vehicle.

A large percentage of the accidents happened while exiting their site. So offer an escort scheduling service that provides help to leave a particular time, especially if there are sites that have a difficult exit.

Make safety an integral part of your training manual, and may be legally important as well. If you don't offer an escort service, but you register someone that is traveling alone, perhaps you can at least help them, as it is impossible to back into a site and really see a small human walking behind their rig. Do whatever you can to insure the safety of all our guests and staff.

Almost all new parks and expanding parks are building pull thru only sites. Not only are these more convenient to the guests, they improve the odds for greater safety as the driver is not attempting to back into a tight site after a long day of driving. If you are planning on upgrading your park, consider designing pull thru only spots to perhaps save lives.

Don't forget to update your street lines, yellow warnings, and signs so they are always visible.

Copyright 2010 by GTI