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A safe way to travel
Page 7
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Coach passengers deserve reassurance at Ministerial level that this form of transport is one of the safest ways to travel. The 10-year trend up to 1972 showed that there were only 0.2 coach passenger deaths per hundred-million passenger-miles, compared with 0.06 for the railways, 0.5 for scheduled airlines, 1.0 for non-scheduled, 1.4 for cars and taxis—and 28.0 for two-wheeled transport.
Anxiety over the recent tragic accidents is understandable, but the whole matter is being pushed out of perspective by the sensational treatment in some of the media. The worst-ever crash, at Hebden Bridge, involved a coach body of a now superseded design which could not be built under present regulations, and in at least one other fatal accident neither coach nor driver appear to have been the cause.
Certainly, complacency cannot be afforded. If an inquiry shows the need for improvements in safety, coach operators will accept them, but the industry is already intensively regulated and it would take enormous sums to try to guarantee an even better safety record. The immediate action is for operators to check their own driver and vehicle safety standards, and the suitability of their equipment, but this is not a moment to be panicked into new legislation for which no justification can be demonstrated.