Mode Shift, Bus Crashes, and the Governance Question We’re Avoiding

Over the past few days we’ve seen multiple bus crashes reported in London.

Each incident will have its own specific circumstances. Investigations will determine the facts. It would be wrong to speculate.

But when several incidents occur close together, it forces a broader question:

Are we treating bus safety as a structural governance issue — or are we still reacting event by event?

At the same time, the International Transport Forum has just published its IRTAD Road Safety Annual Report 2025.

The global picture is sobering:

Nearly 80,000 people were killed across reporting countries in 2024

Only seven countries are currently on track to meet the UN target of halving road deaths by 2030

Around one-third of road fatalities occur in single-vehicle crashes

That last point is important.

Single-vehicle collisions are rarely explained by “driver error” alone. They are often linked to:

Fatigue

Infrastructure design

Speed management

Operational pressure

Scheduling intensity

Vehicle environment

In other words — system conditions.

Is Mode Share Enough?

There is growing discussion in transport policy circles about whether increasing multimodal mode share and reducing vehicle miles travelled (VMT) should be considered safety interventions in their own right.

There is evidence that countries with lower per-capita vehicle mileage often record lower fatality rates.

But correlation is not governance.

Reducing private car use and increasing bus patronage may improve aggregate safety statistics. However, if the bus system itself is not designed and governed safely, risk is not eliminated — it is redistributed.

If a region increases bus mode share without embedding:

Clear safety performance indicators

Transparent reporting frameworks

Workforce involvement in governance

Fatigue safeguards

Contractual safety obligations

Independent oversight mechanisms

then the reform is incomplete.

Bus Reform Without Safety Architecture

Across England, Combined Authorities are moving toward franchising or enhanced partnership models.

The language is ambitious: integration, growth, affordability, modal shift.

But very little is said publicly about:

How safety performance will be measured

Whether safety data will be published routinely

How workforce concerns will be escalated

What independent scrutiny will exist

How contract incentives interact with safety risk

That silence matters.

Because safety cannot sit quietly in the background of reform.

If safety governance is not deliberately designed at the start, systems inherit the inconsistencies of the operators they are trying to unify.

And patchwork governance becomes decades of patchwork outcomes.

The Workforce Perspective

Drivers, engineers and frontline staff operate the network every single day.

They see:

Schedule pressure

Congestion impacts

Infrastructure pinch points

Operational shortcuts

Fatigue patterns

Reporting gaps

If bus reform does not structurally embed workforce voice into safety governance, then one of the most valuable early warning systems in the network is being ignored.

Safety improves when:

Reporting is transparent

Near misses are analysed

Data is published

Lessons are shared

Staff feel safe raising concerns

Not when incidents are treated as isolated events.

Safe Mode Shift

We absolutely should encourage people out of private cars and onto public transport.

But safe mode shift must mean more than statistical redistribution of risk.

It must mean:

System design

Clear accountability

Measurable standards

Public transparency

Workforce inclusion

The conversation cannot stop at “more buses”.

It has to extend to “better governed buses”.

Because if we want passengers to trust the system — and drivers to operate safely within it — safety has to be front and centre from day one.

Not an afterthought.