Campaigner Tom Kearney was hit by a bus in Oxford Street in 2009

SAFER streets campaigners are celebrating after a new bus safety report has called for a host of new measures to prevent more deaths and injuries. The London Assembly’s Transport Committee said that Transport for London (TfL) was too focused on buses being on time and that was “a major factor” behind the rise in collisions and injuries.

Statistics show that over the past two years 25 were people killed and a further 12,000 were injured by buses in London. A man died following a bus crash in Oxford Street while the report was being compiled, the report added.

Bus crash survivor Tom Kearney, who fell into a coma in 2009 after being hit by a double-decker in Oxford Street, said: “Having campaigned relentlessly on the TfL bus safety issue for over five years, the London Assembly vindicates both my conclusions and the well-evidenced allegations of the many TfL bus drivers.

“Safety is not a priority for TfL and lives and livelihoods have been needlessly destroyed on Oxford Street and elsewhere in central London, where the city’s highest concentration of pedestrian and cycling traffic is forced to interact with its most lethal concentration of buses.”

The report recommended setting safety targets for bus drivers and reducing the number of distractions drivers have to deal with. It also called for better investigations into deaths, adding that while the Croydon tram incident will be scrutinised by various bodies “there will be no independent safety inquiry into the bus incident on Oxford Street in April this year, when a man died. TfL and the operator will investigate the incident, and while both organisations have genuine reasons to want to make the bus network safer, neither is independent”.

Mr Kearney believes that the safety measures suggested in the report would help, but he still did not feel that there should be any motorised traffic at all in Oxford Street.

London Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon said in the report: “If TfL wants to instil a culture of safety in the operation of the bus network it has to give operators the right kinds of incentives. Prioritising safety might mean buses are driven more slowly and journeys may take longer. It could also mean more drivers are needed to allow for shorter shifts and longer breaks. It is for the Mayor and TfL’s board to decide if this is worth the additional cost.”

Leon Daniels, TfL’s managing director of surface transport, said: “We welcome the highly constructive ideas in this report, and will take every action we can to bring about further rapid improvements in bus safety. Our Bus Safety Programme is one element in a completely new approach to reducing the unacceptably high number of people killed or hurt on the bus network.“

Action includes better driver training, new technology to limit bus speeds, redesign of buses themselves and proactive analysis of data – made openly available publicly – to understand trends and target intervention.”