Why are so many London buses crashing?
The number of buses crashing in London is up by a fifth in seven years, but City Hall seems unconcerned. James Ford is worried
Something is going badly wrong with London’s buses. On average, every day a staggering 44 London buses crash. That is an increase of nearly 20 per cent on 2019 (which is the staggeringly late date when TfL decided it maybe needed to keep track of these things). In 2025, there were 15,390 bus crashes – which is the equivalent of almost every bus in London crashing twice in a year.
Nor are these crashes minor fender benders. In February a double-decker bus crashed into the Southwark Playhouse, hospitalising six people. In July a single decker bus crashed into the living room of a house in Notting Hill. And, earlier this week, TfL was fined £2m after a woman was killed by a bus whilst using a pedestrian crossing in Walthamstow (in 2023). According to official TfL statistics, 10 people were killed by London buses in 2025.
By comparison, there are between 57 and 65 road collisions per day involving cars (based on a total of 21,000 collisions in 2024). Which would suggest that the buses are still safer than cars. However, there are an average of 2m cars on London’s streets, and only around 8,982 buses. So, whilst one in 30,769 cars are involved in collisions every day, one in 204 buses are crashing. I don’t like those odds. We are all more likely to be hit by a bus than we think, and not just proverbially.
So, what are TfL doing to end the chaos and carnage? The short answer is, very little. TfL has quietly admitted that the Mayor’s aim of zero bus deaths by 2030 will not be met. The target, enshrined in the Mayor’s flagship ‘Vision Zero’ plan (adopted in 2017) to make the transport network as safe and sustainable as possible, has resulted in five separate plans to improve bus safety. The most recent was launched this summer. But the number of fatalities on the bus network has remained stubbornly consistent outside of the pandemic years. TfL has now pushed its target of ending all public transport deaths to 2041.
Michael Liebreich, who served on board of TfL between 2012 and 2018, has branded TfL as “institutionally unsafe” and said that London has the least safe bus system of any major city. A long-term critic of TfL’s safety record, he blames the current contract structure which, in his opinion, encourages drivers to speed.
Bus drivers, for their part, have lobbied in recent years for a ‘Bus Bill of Rights’, a list of 12 improvements to drivers working conditions such as better toilet facilities, more breaks, cooler cabs in the summer and warmer cabs in winter. However, while the list of demands does touch on better bus maintenance, not having to answer Controller’s radio messages whilst in motion and the right to report safety concerns without fear of retribution, it conspicuously fails to address the concerns about speeding. More importantly, although measures are being taken to cool cabs during a heatwave, the Mayor has largely rejected the Bus Bill of Rights.
Conservative mayoral hopeful Festus Akinbusoye has done a grand job debunking the Mayor of London’s plans to create a publicly owned bus company in these pages already. Nationalising one bus route (out of 700) will not reduce the number of bus crashes any more than it will reverse plummeting passenger numbers or undo the fact that assaults on bus drivers have tripled in the past year. It is hard to see this move on the mayor’s part as anything other than vainglorious distraction from the bus network’s real problems.
Buses that keep crashing into pedestrians, cyclists, homes and offices are a menace. The Mayor needs to address this problem urgently rather than burying his sand in the sand or shouting about starting a little bus company. As a politician who never tires to talk about the fact that his dad was a bus driver, a lack of action from Lord Khan on bus safety is especially scandalous.
James Ford was an advisor to former Mayor of London Boris Johnson