Summary
This consultation seeks views on the Department for Infrastructure’s proposed approach to improving safety when passengers, particularly children, are boarding or alighting from buses.
Documents
Consultation description
Evidence considered to date indicates that children face heightened risk immediately before boarding and immediately after alighting, especially where they must cross the road and where traffic speed, visibility or road layout increase the potential for harm. While buses are widely recognised as a safe mode of transport, these moments represent a period of particular vulnerability. For example, when children get off a bus, stepping out in front of it puts them at serious risk of being hit by a car overtaking the bus. Stepping out from behind the bus is also dangerous, as they may face moving traffic.
This consultation focuses on the legislative strand of the Safer Journeys to School programme. It seeks views on how the proposed approach should be refined and applied in practice.
Responses will be considered alongside further analysis, legal advice and engagement with operational partners before decisions are made on whether and how to proceed.
Ways to respond
Department for Infrastructure
James House
2–4 Cromac Avenue
Belfast
BT7 2JA