Bus Accident Claims

By Eoin P. Campbell, LL.B., Solicitor

As a passenger on a bus, the bus company is under a legal obligation to take care of you and to ensure your safety at all times. If there was an accident through the fault of the bus driver, then you should be able to make a successful claim for personal injury compensation against the bus company involved. If the accident was not the fault of the bus driver, then a claim can be made against the driver who was actually at fault.

Injuries in Bus Accidents

It is important to remember that there does not need to be a collision with another vehicle in order to pursue compensation from a bus company. If you are injured because you are thrown from your seat or off your feet due to the driver braking or accelerating excessively, or the bus turns a corner dangerously fast, then you may have a claim. A personal injury claim is in fact just that: a claim for a real physical injury that you have personally suffered. The plaintiff (the person making the claim) must have sustained some form of injury either physical or psychological as a result of the incident. Even where one or either driver involved has indeed acted negligently, even criminally so, a potential plaintiff can only claim compensation for a real personal injury loss or physical damage. A near miss – other than the very circumstances where it can be proved to have caused, for example, a severe psychological trauma – is not sufficient to justify compensation being awarded.

Negligence of Bus Driver

The second factor to note is that the injury sustained must result from the negligence of the bus driver (or the driver of another vehicle involved) who had a duty of care towards you and the other passengers and/or road users at the time of the accident. If the driver can prove that he was not driving in a negligent fashion at the time of the accident, however, the claim will fail against the bus company. However, in such cases, another driver may be responsible for the accident. Negligence determines liability.

Liability for the Bus Accident

The cause of an road accident is not always obvious. In many situations, one party may be completely to blame. However, it may also be true that more than one, or several, factors contributed to an accident. Moreover, one of the causal factors may have in fact been the negligence of the injured party. For example, a passenger may distract a bus driver who then brakes suddenly resulting in the passenger falling and being injured. You will possibly need expert legal advice to help determine liability, particularly in cases where there is contributory negligence.

Contributory Negligence

It is relatively rare for passengers in bus accidents to be anything other than totally innocent parties in the accident.

Contributory negligence is the legal principle that an injured party i.e. the plaintiff, may possibly have contributed to his or her own injury by acting in a negligent manner (in this example by failing to wear a seatbelt or standing in the upper deck in a moving bus) when faced with the obvious and known conditions.

However, it may also be decided by the court, or indeed agreed between the parties, that both the defendant and the plaintiff were partially at fault for the plaintiff’s injury and in such circumstance the principle of contributory negligence will apply.

A successful claim requires but a real injury and negligence. Negligence without a real physical injury, or alternatively, an injury without provable negligence, are not enough to pursue a successful personal injury compensation claim.

What to do after a Bus Accident?

The First Priority is Your Health and Safety

As obvious as it may seem, it should always be remembered that your health and safety is the most important consideration in any traffic accident such as a bus accident. If, for example, you have been hurt in a bus accident, your well-being is far more important than any potential injury claim that you may have. If you, or indeed anyone else, has been seriously hurt, an ambulance (together with the Gardaí) should be called immediately. Given the nature of bus accidents, where there are likely to be multiple people injured, it is certain that both the Gardaí and ambulance services will be called. Do not try to be brave and refuse a place in an ambulance because you feel that you might not be too badly injured.

Go to the Nearest Hospital Immediately

Following a bus accident, it is of the utmost importance that you report to the casualty department of the nearest hospital, or, at the very least, make an emergency appointment with your general practitioner. It is very likely that the medical assistance will be called. Even if immediately following the accident, you feel that your injuries are not particularly serious, it is still advisable that you accept medical assistence. Whiplash symptoms (a common injury for bus passengers) can be experienced immediately following impact but often do not commence to develop for a number of hours after the accident and then will worsen during the next 24 to 48 hours.

Your attendance at hospital or your local doctor will be recorded in your medical records. Your solicitor will need copies of these documents to support your form.

Immediate Formalities

Record the date and time of your injury, if possible, together with the name of the bus company, the route number, and the vehicle registration. In addition, any witness’ details that you can obtain may prove to be very useful in your claim for compensation.

Use the Camera on Your Phone

In modern Ireland, it is fair to say that most of us own a mobile phone, which should obviously be used immediately following an accident to contact the Police/Gardaí and, if necessary, an ambulance. We should also use the camera and/or video function present on most modern cell phones to record images of the bus and other vehicles involved (showing damage to the bus and car if applicable and its road positioning) following the accident. If the bus itself was ill-equipped for passengers (e.g. no seat belts) photographs illustrating same can be taken. Furthermore, it may also be useful to your claim if the pictures can give an accurate impression of the weather and road conditions.

How Much Compensation is Likely for a Bus Injury?

The compensation amount is one of the most common questions asked by clients of their solicitors in relation to road traffic accidents such as bus accidents. The answer is that in the early stage of the preparation of any personal injury case there is absolutely no way of knowing an accurate answer to this question. A solicitor is not a medical doctor and can only determine an accurate settlement value of the case when medical evidence in the form of your medical records, or perhaps specially commissioned reports from a consultant, have been obtained. The fact that the injury was to a passenger on a bus is not directly relevant to determining the amount of compensation, which is based on the injuries and not the type of road traffic accident.

How is the Amount of a Bus Injury Compensation Determined?

It is important to remember that (assuming liability is not in question) the ‘value’ of any personal injury case is assessed by looking at the severity of the injury to the plaintiff and how the injury will affect their working, family, recreational, and personal lives in the short, medium, and long terms. Some injuries (and whiplash type injuries in particular) may take some time to fully manifest themselves and it may be some months or perhaps even years before your doctors can provide an accurate prognosis of the expected recovery period or fully diagnose a long-term condition. Moreover, your claim may well include an aspect of special damages, such as loss of earnings during your recovery and even loss of future earnings.

Dealing Directly With Insurance Companies

I would advise anyone who has sustained a personal injury in a road traffic accident to consider the above very carefully after an accident has occurred. Increasingly, clients are reporting that they have been contacted directly by the third party’s insurance company with offers of settlement in the weeks or even days following the incident.

The temptation to accept the first offer of settlement is strong; the immediate offer of money with minimum hassle and fuss, particularly in the current economic climate, often seems too good to refuse. There is, however, no way of knowing how much the claim is potentially worth at such an early stage and the risk is that the plaintiff may settle their claim for a figure that falls short of its potential value. It is worth asking yourself the question ‘Why would the insurance company offer to settle the case at such an early stage?’. The response is quite logical; to save costs. The liable party will normally be responsible for not only the compensation payment but also for both sets of legal costs and for the costs of procuring specialist medical reports.

It is important to note that each case is unique. If you have recently been involved in a bus accident in which you have sustained an injury and feel that you have a potential personal injury claim, you are advised to discuss all of the points raised in the preceding article with a solicitor at the earliest opportunity.

Copyright © 2010 Eoin P. Campbell

About the Author
Eoin P. Campbell is an honours law graduate (LL.B) and qualified solicitor whose professional experience is in the area of litigation and in particular personal injury claims. Eoin P. Campbell is currently lecturing in law at two universities in Lyon, France.