Great Western Coffee Shop

Three dead in coach crash with car on the M1 near Flitwick (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-31469329)


If this had been a train it would have been much more prominent in the headlines. 

How safe is bus/coach travel?

Does bus/coach safety need to be improved?

Here's an Excel table of suitable-looking statistics:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/10279/ras53001.xls

In (very) short, for 2004-2013 the passenger casualty rate per billion km are:

Rail	killed	0.0	all casualties	26
Bus or coach	killed	0.3	all casualties	153

Note that I think it likely that the rail figures include passengers outside a train, such as on a platfrom, but the bus and coach ones do not include those on pavements even if at a bus stop, or pedestrians who are not passengers at all.

Nobody died on the bus/coach, so I would say it is rather safe on the basis of this incident.

All 3 who died were in the car. A broken down car according to most reports. If you break down on a motorway never remain in your vehicle, get out and get behind the crash barriers. If this had happened we may only be looking at a dented bus, and a written off car.

Agreed, but how is that different to a car hit by a train on a level crossing where the car had crossed on a red light? Yet that would somehow be counted as a casualty on a train. 

There have been, numeraous incidents when passengers in the bus/coach have been killed or injured. 

Edit

Thinking about it is very different in the M1 case it looks like the coach is to blame for the crash (if not the fatalities), whereas in the train on the level crossing the car would have been responsible.

Is all casualties, all deaths?

During the period mentioned we had Ufton Nervet, and Grayrigg both having deaths. I guess the few deaths were not enough to move the percentage if only using to 1 decimal place?

According to the spreadsheet All casualties means killed or seriously injured and slightly injured.

Edited to correct by addition of slightly injured. 

I'm sceptical of the above quoted stats, you say it includes level crossing deaths but a quick look online finds more rail deaths including level crossing deaths than that the rail casualty stat during that period

edit- according to Network rail website 19 pedestrians were killed between 2009 and 2013 at level crossings, with a further 7 in 2014. 7 people died at Ufton Nervet in 2004, and 1 at grayrigg. That from those 2 incidents and 2009-13 pedestrians at level crossings is the 26 in the above stat.
Unfortunately I don't believe for one moment there were no level crossing deaths between 2004 and 2008. Also the network rail figure is pedestrians and doesn't include any killed when a train has struck a car, such as the incident at Athelney Somerset in March 2013 where the car driver died. That takes it to 27 without even researching properly

We are in danger of speculating where perhaps we need to be careful - however, if the Audi was broken down on the hard shoulder, my mind does have me asking "and what was the coach doing on the hard shoulder, then".

The statistics are desperately difficult to read and compare. The typical comparison is passengers and in terms of passenger miles and as I recall (don't have the stats to hand) rail is a number of times safer than rail. But then you start adding in staff, others getting in the way unintentionally, others getting in the way intentionally, and perhaps the stats / proportions change.

I was most careful to make my statement having read the same line in the report that you had and I did say 'looks like'.


But if you look at the spreadsheet 26 is the average killed seriously injured and slightly injured each year per billion passenger kilometres not the total number killed in the entire period.

The values for killed are 0.1 for 2004 and 0.0 for the remaining years.  Presumably the number is below 0.05 for all those remaining years.  Therefore difficult to work out what they are comparing. 


Motorcyclists are the worst at 89 killed per year and 4,085 for all casualties.
Van 0.5 and 59
Cars 1.9 and 229
Cyclists are 27 and 3,764
Pedestrians 29 and 1,529

Curiously there are no figures for HGV's - presumably because they do not carry passengers.

Now I doubt if many of the pedestrians were killed by colliding with other pedestrians so I suspect the figures for Coaches, Cars and Vans do not include the pedestrians (and indeed car passengers) they killed or injured. 

Yes, it's a pity DfT's budget didn't run to another decimal place. For what it's worth, the figures for rail passenger fatalities work out to:
0.02 due to train accidents per se
0.13 due other things on stations.
(Those are averages for 2003/4 to 1012/13, the closest I have to hand.)

It appears I was wrong - the rail figures in DfT's table didn't include all those "other things", so were probably selected to provide a comparable basis.

However, there are some of those "other things" that might get included, e.g. struck on a station crossing or some platform/train interface accidents. I'm not sure if they were, without digging further.
 
But really, the comparison is between low and very low fatal accident rates.

BBC reported on their last news bulletin the coach driver has been arrested. No other details were given.

Can't say relative levels of publicity really bother me, a number of people have died on the roads today and each represents a personal tragedy for all concerned and their families, RIP and thoughts with all concerned.