Bus safety sheets

Road traffic crashes kill approximately 1.35 million people globally each year, with a further 20–50 million sustaining injuries. Seatbelts are the single most effective vehicle feature for reducing occupant death and injury. Wearing a seatbelt reduces the probability of being killed by 40–50% for drivers and front-seat passengers, and by approximately 25% for passengers in rear seats. (WHO Global Status Report on Road Safety; PMC meta-analysis 2023)

One of the most dangerous outcomes in any crash - particularly for buses, which are prone to rollovers - is occupant ejection. An unrestrained passenger is not merely at risk themselves; they become a projectile that endangers everyone else on board.

75% of vehicle occupants ejected from a vehicle in a crash die as a result. Among occupants killed in crashes, 44% of unrestrained passengers were ejected, compared to only 5% of those wearing a seatbelt. (NHTSA / PMC)
 

A peer-reviewed study published in PMC examined seatbelt availability, functionality, and actual use among passengers on 35 large intercity buses in Ghana, observing 1,184 passengers and interviewing a separate group of 633. Ghana is representative of the wider challenge across sub-Saharan Africa: high bus use, high crash fatality rates, and low belt compliance despite belts being present. Only 21.6% of bus passengers were observed wearing seatbelts, even though 92.6% of the seatbelts on those buses were fully functional.

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The Ghana study identified a powerful and low-cost intervention: the driver's voice. On buses where the driver verbally reminded passengers to wear their seatbelts before departure, compliance rose dramatically. On buses where the driver gave a verbal reminder to buckle up, 57.8% of passengers wore their seatbelt, compared to just 15.3% on buses where no reminder was given. A single sentence from the driver nearly quadrupled compliance. (Okyere P, et al. 2022)