Bus drivers in crash hot seat

Bus crashes are commonly caused by drivers travelling too closely to others. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Training issues are being blamed as the cause for 40 per cent of all injury crashes bus drivers are involved in.

Figures obtained under the Official Information Act show bus drivers were responsible for 118 crashes causing injury in Auckland between 2005 and last year.

The most common cause, in 56 of the crashes resulting in injury, was bus drivers following too closely or not looking out for motorists. Other reasons included failing to keep left, failing to give way and driving too fast for the conditions.

National Distribution Union assistant general secretary Karl Andersen said training of Auckland bus drivers was not good enough.

"People come through Work and Income and are put through a crash course in bus driving. Someone can walk off the street having only ever driven a car and into a bus in a very short time," he said.

Andersen said bus driving was generally not a career of choice for people: "It doesn't pay very well and has long hours."

Bus drivers were paid $16-18 an hour on average, he said.

The family of a teenager who was seriously injured after being hit by a bus last year agrees bus drivers need more training.

Auckland Girls' Grammar student Sheetal Chand, 15, was hit by a bus near her family's home in Mt Wellington in August last year.

The driver, 46-year-old Siatua Tusa, pleaded guilty to careless driving causing injury. He was sentenced to 200 hours' community work, disqualified from driving for nine months and ordered to pay the family $4000 reparation.

Sheetal was put into an induced coma, had surgery for a fractured chin and had to have speech sessions and physiotherapy.

In Auckland, eight people have been killed, 60 seriously injured and 325 suffered minor injuries in bus crashes over the past five years.

In June a Herald On Sunday investigation revealed buses were routinely going too fast in 40km/h school zones.

Nineteen of 22 buses monitored at schools around Auckland were exceeding the speed limit and one was recorded at nearly 60km/h.

But bus operators believed there wasn't a problem.

Auckland Transport road corridor operations manager Andrew Allen said bus-related injury crashes occurred mostly in 50km/h areas, and particularly in the central city.

Twenty seven per cent of crashes involved cyclists or pedestrians.

"As a percentage of overall road injury crashes, bus-related injury crashes have changed little in the last nine years despite a growing increase in the bus fleet in the region," he said.

Bus company Ritchies director Andrew Ritchie said bus transport was the "safest form of transport in the world".

"Mums taking their kids to school in cars are something like 18 times more likely to have an accident than a school bus."

Bus crashes made up 1.8 per cent of the 69,011 vehicle crashes in Auckland between 2005 and last year.

joanne.carroll@hos.co.nz