Travelling by bus is a safer mode of transport when compared to cars. A study conducted by SWOV on behalf of the Royal Dutch Association of Transport Companies (KNV) has shown that travelling by bus is twice as safe as travelling by car. Trains and airplanes are the safest modes of transport.
SWOV analysed the available road crash data of the four transport modes in seven European countries, which led to the following risk estimates:
Bus: 1
Car: 2.0
Train: 0.14
Aircraft: 0.17
For buses, the Netherlands seems to have a relatively low number of road deaths among bus occupants compared to deaths “outside”, with a bus as the crash opponent (about 1 : 14); France seems to have relatively many road deaths among bus occupants, about 1 : 4.
As was expected, buses appear to be more dangerous than cars related to casualties outside the vehicle.
In 2017, SWOV carried out a similar study, which compared the safety of buses and passenger cars in Dutch traffic.
