Hollywood Open Air Tours Might Become Regulated with New Bill

On Monday, a Los Angeles assemblyman, AdrinNazarian (D-Sherman Oaks), introduced a stricter legislation for the Hollywood celebrity tour can industry. This legislation comes after a secret investigation conducted by NBC4 that raised safety concerns of the popular ‘open top’ vans in Hollywood Hills and Beverly Hills. These vans have the responsibility of caring countless visitors each into the neighborhoods of celebrities.

I Team camera were placed in the vans and showed the unsafe condition of the vans which put passengers in serious danger in case of a crash. For example, many of the vans had either changed the seats belts or simply removed them. Van owners have also been trying to convert the vans in to ‘convertibles’ but that weakens the structure of the vans. This can prove to be fatal in case of a rollover crash.

The i-Team investigation raised some serious questions. As a result, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) took action by sending special instructions to the operators of the tour vans. They warned them that the federal government had found the vans to be unsafe for passengers in their current state and that they should not be transporting passengers in them at all!

However, these orders were ignored by operators, as an I-Team follow up report discovered. The operators continued carrying the tourists on those same vans every single day.

In order to tackle this situation, Nazarian suggested this spot bill. The aim of this bill is to improve regulation of the highly unregulated tourist van industry. Nazarian’s proposed legislation includes the following suggestions:

• Initiate a new state certification program for open-air tour vans that ensures structural integrity of the vans
• Prohibit removal of any seatbelt from open-air tour vans
• Make it compulsory for the passengers in the open-air tour vans to wear the seat belts
• NHTSA has the responsibility of determining whether the vehicle would be safe or unsafe in the event of a rollover crash.
• Limit the tour routes
• If tour operators violate the law, their permit can be revoked by law enforcement.

Currently the proposed legislation is going to committee. In 2017, a bill will be presented for a vote by the California State Legislature.

Nazarian is not stopping there though. Next year he is planning to introduce another that will regulate the behavior and actions of Hollywood tour guides. The I-Team, in its investigation of the tour vans, saw how some of the guides gave false information to the tourists, e.g. location of celebrity homes. This creates a problem when some of passenger tourists later return to those location to ‘meet’ the celebrities in person.

One homeowner suffered the consequences when one ‘fan’ visited his home several times ad assaulted him twice because he had been told that this was residence of Julia Roberts during a tour. The homeowner himself was not involved in the entertainment industry.

If the second bill passes, tour guide would need to obtain a license to work and could not give out false information to tourists.