Safety of buses and coa­ches

Buses and coaches are considered to be one of the safest means of transport at all and this is why particular severe bus accidents have a great impact on the public nowadays.

In order to describe the current status of the accident and loss occurrence for buses and coaches, the German Insurers Accident Research has analysed a representative data of the insurers, containing 213 cases.

These data comprise not only “crash events”, but also “non-crash events” (incidents where bus passengers fall down in the bus during a braking manoeuvre, for instance).

A second part of the study has discussed the issue of the benefits that could be expected from advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) if the entire bus/coach fleet were equipped with these systems. The theoretically achievable benefits were determined for an automatic emergency braking system, a turn-off assistant system, a lane departure warning system, a lane change assistant system and an electronic stability control system.

The analyses revealed that modern ADAS are capable of influencing the loss occurrence of buses and coaches (accidents involving personal injury and at least € 15,000 total claim value) in a positive way. The analyses also showed that to a certain extent there are significant differences between these benefits, depending on the type of vehicle use (as a coach or as a regular service bus).