Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, for what reason his Department does not include bus occupants as a road user type in its quarterly road casualty statistics.

The Department produces annual figures for bus occupant casualties in June each year which are based on complete data returns from police forces. Provisional quarterly road casualty statistics however are based on incomplete data returns from police forces and bus occupants only account for a very small share of road casualties. Although allowances are made for the missing data, casualty estimates for this group are subject to higher levels of uncertainty than for the main road user types (car occupants, motorcyclists, pedal cyclists and pedestrians). Producing separate figures for bus occupants in the provisional quarterly estimates would result in misleading figures. Instead a single set of figures are estimated for all other road user types, including bus occupant, heavy goods vehicle occupants, van occupant, and other casualties.