Some forms of transport are disproportionately accident-causing, like motorcycling. In 2024, less than 1% of all time people spent on transport was on a motorbike, but 13% of accidents resulting in ACC claims involved people on motorbikes. (It\u2019s important to note that this data shows the number of accidents causing injuries that warrant ACC claims being made, not whether or not that vehicle type caused the accident.)<\/p>\n
But one of the safest forms of transport, even more so than walking, is taking the bus. (It\u2019s worth noting here that we\u2019re talking about road accidents, not personal safety \u2013 these figures don\u2019t take into account the likelihood of being assaulted on the bus<\/a>, though while such incidents can naturally feel concerning, they are very rare compared to the number of bus trips taken each week.)\u00a0In 2024, 5.3% of hours spent travelling were on public transport, and only 3% of accidents on roads were to people on the bus. It doesn\u2019t make immediate sense why there would be so few accidents in a bus; after all, just one bus getting in an accident could potentially injure dozens of people. \u201cAn hour in a bus has 10 times less accident risk than an hour driving a car,\u201d says Ping Sim, the principal safety adviser at Auckland Transport.<\/p>\n One potential reason is because bus drivers are specifically trained for driving big vehicles full of people. \u201cUnlike most road users, bus drivers are professional drivers who operate vehicles every day and undertake regular refresher training and safety assessments throughout their careers,\u201d says Steven McKeefry, the chief operating officer of bus company Kinetic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most urban buses don\u2019t even have seatbelts for people to use \u2013 NZTA doesn\u2019t require this because buses \u201ctypically travel at lower speeds, make frequent stops, and are designed to safely accommodate both seated and standing passengers\u201d, says McKeefry.\u00a0<\/p>\n Drivers often have rest stops written into their contracts, making accidents caused by fatigue less common. Kinetic is trialling \u201cdriver fatigue monitoring technology\u201d in Auckland that can track early signs of fatigue \u2013 drooping eyelids, slower response times \u2013 and notify drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the maintenance factor. There\u2019s no question of a bus skipping its WOF and hoping it\u2019ll be OK; because these vehicles are in use so much of the time, they undergo a much higher degree of maintenance.\u00a0<\/p>\n The size and external design of buses contributes too. \u201cDrivers also sit higher than most other road users, which improves visibility of surrounding traffic, cyclists and pedestrians,\u201d says McKeefry. Buses are bigger than most of what is around them, making them more visible and easy to avoid, and if they do collide with another vehicle, it\u2019s usually smaller and comes out second best.<\/p>\n Sim thinks about these factors as \u201clayers\u201d of safety around bus passengers, making it a transport mode 10 times safer than driving a private car. Trained drivers, big and visible vehicles, going more slowly, usually on sealed urban roads rather than \u201cwindy, unsealed rural roads\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n What about bus lanes? Do they contribute to safer outcomes for buses? A 2022 study in LA <\/a>found that bus lanes consistently improved efficiency for buses but in some cases contributed to more collisions, because of where parked cars were positioned in between buses and traffic. But bus lanes are mostly a win-win, says Sim: they improve efficiency and safety at the same time. \u201cThose goals can complement each other \u2013 one thing that will make public transport unreliable is a crash.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In some places, bus lanes are also shared with cyclists, or a cycle lane is positioned next to a bus lane. This can lead to poor outcomes for cyclists, as some of the smallest vehicles on a road next to some of the biggest vehicles on a road. Research shows <\/a>that when buses are next to them, cyclists ride right at the edge of the road, and where it isn\u2019t safe to overtake, buses tend to follow cyclists more closely, with a less than two-second gap.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Sim says that \u201cin general, it\u2019s best for each transport mode to have its own space\u201d, there is a limited amount of space on the road \u2013 meaning that cyclists, motorbikes and e-scooters sometimes have to share with buses. \u201cIt can be tight with how much space is in bus lanes\u2026 we have to make sure there is support and resources for users travelling at different speeds,\u201d says Sim diplomatically.\u00a0<\/p>\n Changing transport modes impacts the safety of all road users, says Jamie Hosking, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland. \u201cCars are much more dangerous to other [transport users] by far.\u201d In terms of risk to you as an individual, driving may be safer than cycling or riding a motorbike, but as a whole, more driving causes more dangerous accidents. He\u2019s concerned that current government policies raising speed limits<\/a> and offering less funding for public transport<\/a> \u201care going in the wrong direction\u201d for safety, as well as using more fuel.\u00a0<\/p>\n And beyond accidents, there are other health benefits: 30 people taking a bus produces less air pollution than 30 people driving. \u201cWe have over 3,000 deaths a year from air pollution in New Zealand, close to how many people die of smoking, [and] a lot of that is from the transport system,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sim says that one reason Auckland has a lower rate of deaths on the road than other parts of the country is because there are more people on public transport. \u201cHaving fewer cars on the road increases safety for everyone,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n It takes years to get quality data that might reflect how government policies on transport and fuel impact how New Zealanders travel, as well as how many transport accidents there are. But if fuel prices are putting people off private vehicles, at least relative safety is one more reason to take the bus.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Data from ACC and NZTA shows that people travelling in buses have the fewest accidents and deaths of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[59784,51,53219,183801,492,56079,156,111,139,69,92956,183802,2935,112],"class_list":["post-344860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-acc","tag-auckland","tag-auckland-transport","tag-bus-lanes","tag-comments-enabled","tag-cycling-safety","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-road-safety","tag-road-transport","tag-society","tag-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Route 2 bus in Wellington (Photo: Joel MacManus)<\/p>\n
Auckland\u2019s Khyber Pass Road bus lane (Photo: RNZ \/ Cole Eastham-Farrelly)<\/p>\n