Citation

Kirk A, Grant R, Bird R. Proc. Int. Tech. Conf. Enhanced Safety Vehicles 2003; 2003: 10 p..

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, In public domain, Publisher National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

Of all the killed or seriously injured (KSI) passengers on buses or coaches in Great Britain, a surprisingly high proportion, 64.3%, are injured in non-collision incidents. A KSI casualty distribution of this sub-sample identifies that 74.2% of the casualties are female and a large proportion, 58.0%, are elderly casualties 60 years of age or over. When these falls occur the design of the interior can present an injury risk. In recent years bus design has changed as a result of new regulations to allow a wider population to use buses, especially with the introduction of low floor access. These features promote easier boarding and alighting and allow less mobile members of the population to make use of bus travel. Unfortunately this accessibility to travel may also increase the likelihood of these more vulnerable people receiving injuries on buses. This study uses British national road accident data, commonly called STATS 1', to investigate bus and coach accidents. Overall 49.0% of KSI casualties are both not seated and the vehicle does not have an impact. It is found that when a casualty is not seated there is an 8.3% likelihood of sustaining a KSI injury, compared to figures of 4.1% for seated passengers and 5.8% overall. Interestingly there are more casualties when alighting the vehicle than when boarding, with a shift towards a higher proportion of serious injuries. 93.9% of all casualties occur on roads with a 30 mph (48 kph) speed limit and 3.9% on 40 mph (64 kph) roads. There are almost three times as many female than male KSI passengers. Causes are given as slips, trips and falls on the vehicle, slips, trips and falls when alighting, and rapid acceleration, deceleration or braking manoeuvres. Injury often results when passengers collide with fixtures in the bus such as grab rails and ticket machines. Emergency braking is cited as a common problem. The consequences of changes in bus design to make them more accessible to disabled people on accident risk are discussed.