If you are injured on a bus, can you make a claim for personal injury compensation? Can the bus driver be held liable? When might they be held liable, and pave the way for you to make a successful injury claim? Here’s a little advice about it.
Bus drivers have a responsibly to pay due care and attention to avoid any passengers becoming injured whilst under their care. Ultimately the bus company will be responsible and will have to pay out, usually through insurers, in the event of making a claim. As a passenger in a collision, you pretty much have a guaranteed claim for compensation if you are injured.
So aside from the obvious avoidance of road accidents, i.e. if the bus driver is responsible for causing a road traffic collision, when else can they be held liable?
Erratic Driving
The driver has a duty to drive safely to avoid anyone becoming injured. Commonly I’m talking about safe braking distances, manoeuvring around corners at an appropriate speed, and sticking to the speed limits in general. If a bus driver is not concentrating and slams the brakes on to avoid emerging on to a roundabout too early, as an example, they may be liable. If they screech round a corner too fast, they could also be liable.
But being able to make a successful claim for compensation normally involves getting over two key hurdles – being injured due to the negligence of the driver, and proving it. If, for example, a pedestrian steps out in front of the driver at a none crossing point and the driver has no choice but to slam their brakes on to prevent an accident, that’s not necessarily negligence. Holding the driver at fault because they took the correct action in performing an emergency stop to avoid hitting a pedestrian is unlikely to result in a successful claim. It’s not the drivers fault, it’s the pedestrians.
Again, if a vehicle emerges from a side road in to the path of the bus and they pull an emergency stop, the same applies.
On the proof side of things, CCTV or witness information could help. But be warned, it could be one word against another – so you don’t necessarily have an easy claim to make.
Doors
We have seen a few claims like this – drivers closing the doors on people, or the doors in general closing on people. If this happens and you are injured as a result, you may be able to make a claim for personal injury compensation. You could end up with a nasty trapping injury if part of your body is in the way when the doors close.
Setting Off Too Quick
Now, this is a very common occurrence, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have a claim for compensation. The Public Service Vehicles (Conduct of Drivers, Inspectors, Conductors and Passengers) Regulations 1990 actually state in Regulation 5 that:
“A driver and a conductor shall take all reasonable precautions to ensure the safety of passengers who are on, or who are entering or leaving, the vehicle.”
So there is a duty, but the thing to remember is that on most busses you don’t necessarily have to be seated. There is the facility to stand. So whether a driver must wait for someone to sit down or not is a little bit of a grey area. If the passenger getting on is perhaps very old or has obvious difficulty moving, the bus driver should take this in to account. But this kind of situation could vary on a case by case basis.
Proving bus driver liability in order to make a successful claim for personal injury compensation can be a fairly difficult thing to do. That’s why you need to take all reasonable steps to secure your case. We advise:
- You report the matter to the driver at the time, and take their relevant details.
- Make a formal report to the company ASAP.
- Make a formal request for CCTV footage to be retained ASAP. It isn’t normally kept for longer than a few weeks, and it could be the make or break of your case.
- Instruct a specialist personal injury law firm like us ASAP to secure the best possible chance of winning the claim. Call us on 0800 634 75 75.
