Analysis of Florida transit bus accidents

Abstract

The safe operation of public transit vehicles is of utmost importance to the transit agency, its’ employees and passengers. Most transit agencies have hundreds of accidents per year. While each accident may be reviewed carefully as an individual incident, at many Florida transit systems there has been very little formal analysis of all accidents on an aggregate basis, and a tool to identify the effectiveness of capital and operational safety campaigns. The FDOT Research Ideas project on System Safety Plans and Accident Tracking Analysis completed in 1999, recommended that all Florida transit systems begin collecting a core set of accident characteristics to be monitored and analyzed on a statewide basis. This project uses this data to track and analyze accident occurrences and causal factors for many of the medium-size transit systems in Florida. In addition, a data-based tool has developed for medium transit systems to easily track and analyze their accident data in aggregate over time is included in the Appendix A and the NCTR website. This will allow the agency to be able to identify trends in occurrences and the effectiveness of safety programs.