Review of Bus Run-off-Road Crashes

Crashes involving buses capture the attention of the media and general public because of the dramatic and often catastrophic nature of such crashes. Sometimes national and State roadside design policy can be driven not by good engineering but by a need to respond to the media and general public. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigates “significant crashes” which often leads to investigating bus crashes because of the high number of potential victims and the attention focused on such crashes by the media and general public. For example, in the last forty years, fifty percent of the bridge rail crash investigations resulting in recommendations from the NTSB to American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) have involved a bus or motorcoach. These recommendations have the potential to cause widespread changes to the direction of national highway safety policy with little consideration for the frequency of these crashes in relation to all other vehicle crashes. It is necessary to understand the nature and frequency of these types of crash events in relationship to all crashes to formulate effective national highway policy. This paper capitalized on national crash data gathered by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to better understand if buses should be given specific consideration when developing roadside design policy. The results of this research indicate that buses are 27 percent less likely than other vehicles to become involved in a run-off road (ROR) crash. Victims of bus crashes are 0.87 times less likely to become injured in a bus crash then victims of other vehicle crashes. Bus crashes do not appear to present a significant roadside challenge in terms of exposure or injury rates when compared to all vehicle types. While bus crashes are dramatic and news worthy, they do not appear to be a significant national roadside safety problem.