§ Mr. CohenTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to his answer of 28 October 1987,Official Report, column 215, if he will make a statement about progress towards eliminating bus door accidents; and what are the latest figures for accidents involving people trapped in the centre doors of driver-only buses.
§ Mr. Peter Bottomley[holding reply 2 November 1988]: We shall shortly be consulting on draft regulations to consolidate and simplify the present bus regulations. We propose to include provisions to reduce the risk of people getting trapped in power-operated doors.
The national figures asked for are not available. I understand that last year LRT was notified of some 300 incidents involving people trapped in the centre doors of one-person-operated buses, not all involving injury. The total number of boarding or alighting accidents for LRT's one-person-operated buses was 801 last year, compared with 922 on crew-operated buses. The number of accidents per million passenger miles as 0.85 on one-person-operated buses and 4.78 on crew-operated buses.