It’s taken a little longer than initially promised, but Transport for London has published a hefty spreadsheet containing details on collisions and other incidents involving buses.
The data was initially promised to be available from April but publication seemed to slip without public explanation, with the document only going live last week.
I’m told by road safety campaigner Tom Kearney – himself knocked down by a bus in Oxford Street – that particular credit for securing its release belongs to London Assembly Member Victoria Borwick.
While all four London Assembly parties have pushed transport bosses to increase transparency around road safety statistics, Tom says it was Victoria’s relentless pressure which ensured the bus data entered the public domain.
The initial release covers the first three months of 2014 and contains details of each incident type, including trips and falls on buses and collisions between them and other road users.
The past year or so has seen an understandable media, TfL and Mayoral focus on the role of HGVs in accidents and deaths and spurred major players to look at how they can be made safer, either by selective banning or through design changes.
But with 1,889 people killed or seriously injured in incidents involving buses over the past five years, Tom and other safety campaigners believe it’s time London’s 8,700 buses and individual operators underwent the same scrutiny.
There are already plans to trial detection equipment on buses which will “help drivers be more aware of pedestrians and cyclists near their vehicles”. If the trials are successful the equipment could be rolled out across the entire fleet.
But Assembly Members want TfL and the Mayor to go further and conduct a comprehensive study which looks at the role of specific roads, bus routes and operators in pushing up accident numbers.
A lot of the information needed for a such a study is now in the public domain which means that even if an official study fails to materialise, safety campaigners and the media will be able to conduct their own.
Dave Holladay says
The follow through for this has to be that we get a bit more than just a crash count. TfL has a mandated duty (s.39.3(a) RTA 1988) to investigate crashes but the follow through is seriously flawed when s.39.3(b) et seq says they are to then provide remedies through road safety measures and fixing any faults with road design and operation.
Simply throwing in a ‘solution’ of fitting detectors on a bus without first analysing the actual causal factors in any crashes is really measure of a naieve or desperate authority taking a stab in the dark at dealing with the issues involved.
What would be very revealing is some detail which enables analysis of the type of crashes and whether there are repeat sequences, and even locations, providing patterns and hazard details that can fed in to the way bus and cycle interaction can be planned and managed
The last incident, and indeed the preceding 2 incidents I’ve had with TfL contractors, had all involved the bus pulling alongside and pulling in on me. In the most recent I had the bus driver indicate to pull in, and begin the move at the same time for a bus stop on The Aldwych as I was alongside the front wheel. Despite my thumping on the side and windows of the bus, to the consternation of the passengers he continued to pull in but as he also had to slow down, I got ahead and stopped him moving forward. In contravention of the “Conduct Regulations” the driver refused to give his driver number and garage details, and proceeded to treat my action as warranting a Code Red. As I was likely to miss my train from Euston I just left him at that point, with a problem of then extricating the bus from the traffic that had then built up around it.
In retrospect I really should have taken details, as with the 5 year roll-over in TfL London Bus contracts means that the fleet now has (in theory) 100% of vehicles with up to 8 working external cameras, recording to overwrite every 7-14 days. All the main operators now ave ‘black box’ recording with Green Road or similar systems to promote good driving technique and deliver a valuable reduction in fuel consumption. Any incident should therefore be able to deliver a case file of recorded images and driving detail that can be stored and cross referenced for independent review. The SoS for Transport has already hinted that roads should have the same standard of independent crash investigation as air, rail and marine, and hinted that the ORR might take on a regulatory role for Highways, but we already have a roads regulator in the form of the Traffic Commissioners and DVSA, but both seriously under resourced to tackle the massive task for simply working to ‘prevent harm’ from commercial use of the roads.
So now we have a base-list I’d hope that an FoI request further could discover if case files exist, and the opportunities available to secure some independent reports on key cases, which can be published on-line for full public scrutiny.
Theme for the next stage of lobbying perhaps – we know the material is recorded, it should be downloaded as a basic protocol for any reportable incident, just as many London operators issue ‘section 170’ cards to their drivers to provide the required information if the presence of the bus is a factor in any injury or damage incident.
In a study (TRL 592) on cycle carriage on buses commissioned by DfT in 1997, one detail did emerge, which I note still holds true today. On a per vehicle per year basis, buses knock over/into more pedestrians than any other class of vehicle, but this is hardly a surprise. Buses are out in service for 18 hours/day, or longer (10 times the time for the average private car) Buses operate mostly, and most frequently in busy urban areas, teeming with pedestrian traffic, and pedestrians are actually invited to get close to the bus, in order to get on & off.
Understanding the problem can go a long way to finding the solutions. resources might be better targetted to actually investigating the crashes properly rather than being won over by the latest gizmo and a suave sales pitch.
Dave Holladay says
I’ve had an interesting few sessions doing data-sorts and attempting analyses of the reports. It is slightly impaired by several ‘Unknown’ entries notably the age and gender of every one of the 13 bus drivers who went to hospital with their injuries, and 5 incidents where the category of ‘road user’ was also not recorded.
The highest scoring bus route was the 109 with a variety of incidents, but interestingly 4 ‘falls outside the bus’ and all in January, a feature also for the 410. perhaps slippery conditions underfoot at certain bus stops? The 205 on the other hand has all its incidents as falls in the bus, and all in Jan-Feb. Was there a company campaign in February for smoother driving?
As significant as pointing to the Arriva-owned companies, with 78 incidents reported, and perhaps the biggest number of buses/contracts/routes in busy Central areas, it actually makes sense to also look at the 3 operators of multiple contracts with no incidents reported, and for good measure the community interest company Hackney Community Transport, with several routes in inner London but just one injury incident, and we might ask. What are they doing differently.
Well Sullivans out in South Mimms is a family run operation and largely outside the mayhem of Central London, but London Sovereign (Transdev) is part of a bigger group, But the story from Epsom Coaches (Quality Line) bears a look. A few years back they set up the buses which operated on routes entirely within 30mph areas, to run no faster than 30mph, and as a result reported fewer minor crashes, less driver stress and lower fuel consumption, all surprisingly a good thing for the bottom line.
Some of the other operators, notably Stagecoach, make a big deal on using Green Road driving monitors and rewarding drivers who achieve high scores through gentle acceleration & braking and other smooth driving skills.
So the data so far – a curate’s egg – useful in parts, but could have so much greater value if it had better detail, and enabled clear analysis of trends, rather than a blunt stick to beat Arrive and other high scored operators with for having the worst returns.