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Claim after a bus or coach accident in Scotland

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Personal injury

Claim after a bus or coach accident in Scotland

You do not need a collision to have a claim against a bus operator. Most injuries on buses happen to standing passengers when a driver brakes or swerves harder than the situation required, and those cases turn almost entirely on evidence that the operator will delete within weeks.

RFPublished by Rooney Family Law Limited, solicitors, regulated by the Law Society of Scotland · Last reviewed 14th August 2026

Who you claim against

The claim is against the operator, not the driver personally. An operator is responsible in law for the fault of its driver in the course of employment, and it may also be at fault in its own right — for the state of the vehicle, for how the driver was trained, or for a system of work that made the incident likely.

There is a statutory duty that is directly on point and worth citing, because it sets out plainly what a bus driver is expected to do. Regulation 5 of the Public Service Vehicles (Conduct of Drivers, Inspectors, Conductors and Passengers) Regulations 1990 provides that a driver and a conductor “shall take all reasonable precautions to ensure the safety of passengers who are on, or who are entering or leaving, the vehicle”. The same regulation requires the driver to stop close to the left or near side when picking up or setting down. Those Regulations apply in Scotland.

A bus is a motor vehicle, so the compulsory insurance provisions in Part VI of the Road Traffic Act 1988 apply, and section 145 requires cover for death or bodily injury to any person arising out of the use of the vehicle. A fare-paying passenger is any person. An operator must also hold a public service vehicle operator’s licence under section 12 of the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981.

One exception that catches people out

Section 144(2)(a)(ii) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 exempts from the compulsory insurance requirement a vehicle owned by a Scottish council constituted under section 2 of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, at a time when the vehicle is being driven under the owner’s control. Where a council both owns and controls the bus, there may be no motor insurer at all — the council carries the risk itself. The claim is then made directly against the council. That does not weaken the claim in the slightest; a Scottish local authority is a good defender. But advice telling you to “claim against the bus company’s insurer” is simply wrong for those cases.

You do not need a collision

A large proportion of bus injuries involve no impact with anything. A passenger is standing or walking down the aisle, the driver brakes hard or swings out, and the passenger goes down. Older passengers break hips and wrists this way, and the injuries are frequently life-changing.

These claims are perfectly good claims, but they are not automatic. What has to be established is that the manoeuvre fell below the standard of the reasonably careful bus driver — that the braking or the swerve was unnecessary, or was carried out with more violence than the circumstances called for, or arose in circumstances the driver ought to have anticipated. A driver who brakes hard because a car pulls out without warning has not been careless; the fault lies with the car. A driver who pulls away sharply while an elderly passenger is still making their way to a seat is in a different position, and regulation 5 says so in terms.

Where the emergency was caused by another vehicle that then drove off, the Motor Insurers’ Bureau route through the Untraced Drivers Agreement 2017 is available, and it operates in Scotland.

These cases are won and lost on the on-board CCTV, and operators overwrite it

Retention periods vary but are commonly between fourteen and thirty-one days. If you take one thing from this page: the request to preserve the footage needs to go to the operator in writing within days, not weeks, quoting the route, the service time, the vehicle fleet number if you have it, and the date. Once the footage is gone the case usually comes down to your word against the driver’s, and the driver will have made a report the same day while you were at hospital.

If you were hit by a bus rather than travelling on one

The position is the same as any other road traffic claim: the operator is responsible for the driver’s fault and the operator’s insurer answers for it, subject to the local authority point above. Pedestrians and cyclists are within the compulsory cover in section 145 in the same way passengers are.

Section 149 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 is worth knowing about. It removes the defence of voluntary assumption of risk against a passenger, and voids any agreement purporting to restrict liability towards a passenger. A notice on a bus does not limit what the operator owes you.

What the Traffic Commissioner can and cannot do

People often report a bus operator to the Traffic Commissioner for Scotland believing it will produce compensation. It will not, and it is worth being clear about that so you do not lose time.

The traffic commissioners license and regulate bus, coach and heavy goods vehicle operators, and register local bus services. They can take disciplinary action against an operator’s licence and against a driver’s vocational entitlement, and they hold public inquiries. They have no compensation function, no power to award damages and no role in deciding who was at fault for your injuries. Reporting an operator is a worthwhile thing to do if the driving was dangerous or the vehicle unsafe, and the regulatory file may later be useful, but it is a separate exercise from a claim.

Long-distance coach travel

Assimilated Regulation (EU) 181/2011 on bus and coach passenger rights applies in Great Britain, and it is frequently misdescribed online as giving passengers a right to compensation for injury. It does not. Article 7 provides that passengers are entitled to compensation “in accordance with any applicable law other than this Regulation” and then sets minimum floors — in the region of one hundred and ninety thousand pounds per passenger for death or personal injury, and one thousand pounds per item of luggage, with full replacement or repair for mobility equipment. It defers to national law, which in Scotland means an ordinary claim in delict. Its full application is confined to regular services of two hundred and fifty kilometres or more, so on almost every Scottish local route it does not apply at all.

The time limit

Three years from the date of the accident under section 17 of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, or from the date of knowledge if that is later. Where the injured passenger is a child, the clock does not start until the sixteenth birthday, because in Scotland nonage ends at sixteen rather than eighteen — so the claim ordinarily runs out at age 19, not the twenty-first. That is a Scottish rule and United Kingdom-wide guidance will give you the English answer. That is the ordinary case. The three-year period can start later where the relevant facts were not known, under section 17(2)(b), and section 19A is a contested application to the court rather than a safety net to plan around.

Claims against a local authority operator are subject to the same three-year period. There is no shorter notice requirement.

What to do now

Get the route number, the service time and, if you can, the fleet number on the vehicle. Report it to the driver or the operator before you leave if you are able to, so there is a record. Take the names of other passengers, because there will not be another chance. Photograph anything relevant — a wet floor, a broken handrail, a defective step. Write down what happened while it is fresh. And ask, in writing, for the CCTV to be preserved.

Sources

This page is general information about the law of Scotland and is not advice on your circumstances. Time limits are strict and the consequences of missing one cannot be undone. Take advice on your own case.