One death every three weeks involving London buses, new figures show

Accidents on London’s bus network claim a life every three weeks, new figures have revealed.

Campaigners today called for Transport for London to impose penalties on bus operators based on their safety record instead of their timeliness, which they say would help bring down the death toll.

Between April 2007 and March this year, bus collisions killed 128 people on the capital’s roads. A further 14 died following “slips, trips and falls” while on board.

The data came to light following a Freedom of Information request to TfL by safety campaigner Tom Kearney, who was left fighting for his life after being hit by a bus in Oxford Street six years ago. TfL was not able to confirm how many bus drivers had been prosecuted following collisions.

Currently bus companies can be fined for persistent lateness but involvement in deaths and injuries carries no specific penalty.

“There isn’t a single performance indicator pertaining to TfL buses’ safety,” he said. “They only relate to timeliness and that’s the problem. There are no safety performance measures.

“The single most important indicator of a public service should be how many people it’s killing or injuring.”

The fatalities include 81 pedestrians, six cyclists, 15 bus passengers and three drivers. Six of the people who died were children while 30 were elderly.

Mr Kearney added: “If you kill someone with a car, there’s about a 35 per cent chance you’ll be convicted. If you kill someone with a bus there’s a 13 per cent chance you’ll be prosecuted.”

He also claimed the death figures were only the tip of the iceberg.

Quarterly collision data published by TfL shows 2,736 people were injured or killed on or by TfL buses during the first six months of 2015, but no data is published for the number of collisions that resulted in no injury.

A separate FOI earlier this year revealed London buses were involved in nearly 25,000 collisions in the year 2014/15 – an average of 67 every day.

In addition, only deaths that occur within 30 days of a collision are counted.

Asked whether he believed poor infrastructure was partly to blame, he said: “If you know the infrastructure is ineffective and impose performance contracts related to timeliness on a surface transport contract, you’re asking for more deaths.”