Public Transport Accident Claims
Bus, coach, train, tram and taxi
As a passenger you have almost no control over what happens, which is why the law tends to be on your side when something goes wrong. If you were injured on public transport and it was not your fault, you may be able to make a public transport accident claim. You do not need to know who was to blame before you call us.
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Can you make a public transport accident claim?
Usually, if you were injured within the last three years and somebody else was at fault. Operators owe their passengers a duty of care, and so do the other drivers on the road around them. A public transport injury claim can follow a collision, a fall on board, or a hazard at a station or a stop.
It applies whether you were on a bus, a coach, a train, a tram, the Underground or in a taxi, and whether the accident happened on the vehicle, getting on or off it, or at the station or stop. It also applies if you were a pedestrian or in another vehicle hit by a bus or a tram, though that is a different claim and we will say so when we speak.
You do not need to know who was at fault
Not knowing is not a reason to hold off ringing. You were sitting down, facing the wrong way, or looking at your phone. Something happened, and you have no idea whether the driver of your bus caused it or the car that pulled out did.
You are not expected to know. Working out who was responsible is the job of the claim, not a condition of starting one. Between the operator’s incident log, the CCTV, the police report and the accounts of other passengers, the picture is usually established without you having seen it happen.
Being a passenger also puts you in a strong position. You were not driving, and where two parties dispute who was at fault, that argument is between their insurers rather than something you have to resolve first.
bus and coach occupants were injured on Great Britain’s roads in 2025, 323 of them killed or seriously injured.
Public transport accidents, and who the claim is against
Who your claim is against depends on what you were travelling on, and working that out is the first thing we do.
You were on a bus or a coach
Against the operator, met by their insurer, and against the other driver as well where a collision caused it. You are not choosing between them: we name whoever the evidence supports, and more than one is normal.
You were on a train, a tram or the Underground
Against the train operator, the company that manages the station, or the owner of the track, and in a station fall it is frequently two of the three. This is the one where passengers most often give up, because there is no obvious person to blame.
You were in a taxi or a private hire car
Against your driver’s insurer or the other driver’s. You do not have to wait for the two of them to agree which, and a black cab, a private hire car and an app-based ride are all treated the same way.
You were a passenger in a car
Against the driver’s insurer, not against the driver. If that was a friend, a relative or a colleague, the claim is paid by the policy rather than out of their pocket, which is the thing that stops most people ringing at all.
Which process your claim goes through, and why the vehicle decides it
Most low-value road traffic injury claims in England and Wales now go through the Official Injury Claim portal, under the RTA Small Claims Protocol. It covers claims where the injury is valued at up to £5,000 and the whole claim at up to £10,000. Whether your claim belongs there turns on something you would not guess: what you were travelling on.
Bus, coach, taxi and car passengers
A bus, a coach and a taxi are all motor vehicles on a road, so an injury to a passenger is a road traffic accident. The protocol lists the road users it treats as vulnerable and excludes, and a passenger inside a vehicle is not among them. So a claim worth up to £5,000 for the injury normally starts in the portal, and the fixed tariff for whiplash injuries can apply.
Most low-value road traffic injury claims in England and Wales now go through the Official Injury Claim portal, under the RTA Small Claims Protocol. It covers claims where the injury is valued at up to £5,000 and the whole claim at up to £10,000. Whether your claim belongs there turns on something you would not guess: what you were travelling on.
Train, tram and Underground passengers
A railway or light rail injury is not an accident arising out of the use of a motor vehicle on a road, so it is not a road traffic accident for these purposes. It falls outside the portal and outside the whiplash tariff, and the injury is valued under the Judicial College Guidelines in the ordinary way.
The tariff matters because it is low. For a cause of action arising on or after 31 May 2025 the fixed figures run from £275 for a whiplash injury lasting up to three months to £4,830 for one lasting 18 to 24 months, with slightly higher figures where a minor psychological injury was suffered at the same time, and a court can go above the tariff only in exceptional circumstances. A tram passenger with the same neck injury as a bus passenger is not held to those figures. That is not a reason to prefer one journey over another, but it is a reason not to accept a tariff offer on a rail claim.
None of this decides whether you have a claim. It decides which route the claim takes and what the injury is measured against. Where the claim is worth more than £5,000 for the injury, it leaves the portal in any event.
Bus accident claims
A bus injury does not have to involve a collision. The causes include movement inside the vehicle rather than an impact with something outside it: braking and pulling away sharply, doors closing too early or the bus moving off before you are on, falls on the steps, injuries to people getting off with shopping or a pushchair, and worn handrails, wet floors or broken seating. Being thrown forward while standing is a cause of a bus accident claim in its own right, and not something you have to have been careless for.
- Braking and pulling away sharply. Being thrown forward while standing, or before you have reached a seat.
- Doors closing too early, or the bus moving off before you are on. Including falls on the steps and injuries to people getting off with shopping or a pushchair.
- Worn handrails, wet floors and broken seating. Maintenance failures the operator should have picked up, which is where their inspection records matter.
- Collisions with cars, cyclists and pedestrians. Where a bus passenger accident claim may be against the operator, the other driver, or both.
- Coach travel and day trips. A coach accident claim can follow luggage falling from overhead racks, a fall on the steps, or a collision on a longer journey.
We request the operator’s inspection and maintenance records where they bear on what happened. Coach accident claims are handled the same way, including tours and private hire.
Taxi and private hire accident claims
A taxi passenger accident claim is usually the simplest claim on this page to bring. Whether your driver caused the collision or the other one did, you can claim. If they disagree about it, the argument is between their insurers, not something you need to settle first.
Black cabs, private hire and app-based rides
This is the part that catches self-employed drivers out, and it is worth getting right from the start. An employed driver can produce payslips. If you are paid per drop, per route or per parcel, nobody hands you that evidence and it has to be built.
Uber and app-booked rides: if you were the passenger when it crashed
An Uber or app-booked ride is covered in the same way as any other taxi journey. A private hire vehicle holding a licence has to be insured to carry passengers for hire and reward, and that policy answers for your injury whether the fault was your driver’s or the other driver’s. Keep the trip record in the app, because it identifies the driver, the vehicle and the time without anyone having to take details at the roadside.
One problem worth flagging: if the driver has settled the vehicle damage privately, their insurer may tell you it has no record of the accident. That does not end your injury claim. The policy still has to answer for it, and the trip record, the police reference and the operator’s own log are what establish that the journey and the collision happened.
Getting in and out
Being dropped in an unsafe spot, or a door opened into traffic or into a cyclist. The duty does not end when the vehicle stops.
Seat belts in a taxi, and the exemption that does not apply to you
The seat belt exemption people have in mind when they say taxi passengers do not have to belt up is real, but it does not cover the passenger. Regulation 5 of the Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts) Regulations 1993 requires every person riding in a front or rear seat of a motor vehicle to wear an adult belt. Regulation 6(1)(g) does create an exemption for a taxi or private hire vehicle holding a licence, but it is an exemption for the driver, while seeking or answering a call for hire or carrying a passenger for hire.
What that means for a claim is narrower than it sounds. Not wearing an available belt may reduce your compensation for contributory negligence, but it does not by itself prevent a claim. A belt that was missing, broken or inaccessible is the operator’s problem rather than yours, and the reduction argument does not get started where there was no working belt to wear.
If the driver was the one at fault
If the vehicle turned out not to be insured for carrying passengers, the claim does not stop there, as the section on uninsured drivers below explains.
Train, tram and Underground accident claims
Most rail injuries happen at the station rather than on the train, and responsibility can sit with the operator, the station manager or the infrastructure owner. A train station accident claim is usually against whoever manages the station, which is not always the company whose name is on your ticket.
The Office of Rail and Road records where these injuries happen. In the year to 31 March 2026 it counted 7,610 injuries to passengers and members of the public on the mainline railway. Of the less serious ones, 4,456 happened in mainline stations. Of the ones serious enough for someone to be taken to hospital, the regulator reports that the majority on the mainline, and 93% on the London Underground, happened in a station or at the platform train interface. Slips, trips and falls accounted for more than two thirds of those severe mainline injuries.
- Platform edges and the gap. Falls while boarding or leaving a train, especially where the step or gap was poorly lit or unmarked.
- Stairs, escalators and wet concourses. Station falls where cleaning, signage or maintenance fell short.
- Doors and overcrowding. Being caught in closing doors, or injured because a service was dangerously full.
- Trams and light rail. Including collisions with pedestrians and cyclists at street-level crossings
Rail and light rail claims are also the ones that fall outside the online portal and outside the whiplash tariff, for the reasons set out above.
The compensation rules for long-distance coach passengers
There is a rule in retained law that applies to some bus and coach journeys, and it is easy to read as a guaranteed minimum payout. It is not quite that, and the difference matters. Article 7(2) of Regulation (EU) No 181/2011, which continues to apply in the United Kingdom, provides that any maximum limit imposed by the applicable law on compensation for death or personal injury must not be less than £190,000 per passenger, with £1,000 per item of luggage. So it is a limit on any cap, not a guarantee of a payment.
In practice this is good news rather than bad. Damages for personal injury in England and Wales are not capped at all, so there is no ceiling for Article 7 to raise. Where the Article does bite is on luggage and equipment: compensation for a damaged wheelchair, other mobility equipment or an assistive device must always equal the cost of replacing or repairing it, with no cap of any kind.
Which journeys are covered is a separate question. Article 2(1) catches regular services with a scheduled distance of 250 km or more. For a regular service shorter than that, Article 2(2) applies only a short list of other articles and Article 7 is not among them, so a local bus route is outside it. Article 2(3) catches occasional services, which is where coach tours and private hire coaches sit, so a Birmingham to London coach and a day trip are both in. If your journey was a local one, none of this reduces your claim. It simply means the claim rests on the ordinary duty of care, which is how the claims on this page are ordinarily brought in any event.
Article 8 is the one passengers can use on the day. Where it applies, the carrier must provide reasonable and proportionate assistance with immediate practical needs after an accident, including accommodation, food, clothes, transport and help getting first aid, and it may cap accommodation at £70 a night for a maximum of two nights. The Article says in terms that any assistance provided does not constitute recognition of liability, which is worth knowing if you were offered help and were not sure whether taking it would count against you.
Accidents on public transport abroad, and why the deadline can be two years
If your journey was by air or by sea, the three year rule does not apply and the deadline is two years. If it was by road, the deadline is set by the law of the country where the accident happened, which is explained below. Either way, this is the one thing on this page that can cost someone their claim through no fault of their own, which is why it is here rather than in the FAQ.
By air
The Montreal Convention 1999 governs injury on an international flight. The carrier’s strict liability limit rose to 151,880 Special Drawing Rights on 28 December 2024, up from 128,821, and above that the carrier can escape liability only by proving it was not negligent. The deadline is two years from the date the aircraft arrived, or ought to have arrived.
By sea
The Athens Convention as amended by its 2002 Protocol governs injury on a ferry or a cruise and has applied since 23 April 2014. There is a distinction inside it that decides how hard your claim is. For a shipping incident, meaning a shipwreck, capsizing, collision, stranding, explosion, fire or defect in the ship, liability is strict up to 250,000 Special Drawing Rights and can reach 400,000 unless the carrier proves the incident happened without its fault or neglect. For an injury not caused by a shipping incident, a slip on a wet deck, for example, the carrier is liable only if you prove fault or neglect. The deadline is again two years.
If you took a car on the ferry, the same Convention limits the carrier’s liability for the vehicle and everything in it to 12,700 Special Drawing Rights, with cabin luggage at 2,250 and other luggage at 3,375.
By road, on a coach or a bus abroad
A coach or bus crash abroad is not governed by either Convention, and the rule is different again. Under Article 4(1) of the Rome II Regulation, which the United Kingdom retained, the law that applies to an injury claim is the law of the country where the damage happened. A crash in Spain is ordinarily a Spanish law claim, even when it is brought in an English court.
There is one exception that matters to a British passenger on a British coach. Article 4(2) provides that where the person claimed to be liable and the injured person both have their habitual residence in the same country, the law of that country applies instead. So if a United Kingdom operator’s driver caused the crash and you live here too, English law can govern the claim wherever the coach was. Who you booked with is therefore one of the first things we ask about.
Which law applies is not a technicality, because Article 15 makes that same law decide the things you actually care about: the assessment of your damages, under Article 15(c), and the limitation period, under Article 15(h). A claim governed by another country’s law can be worth a different amount from the identical claim here, and its deadline can be shorter than three years. That is the real reason to ring early about an accident abroad.
Special Drawing Rights are an international unit, not a currency, and the sterling equivalent moves with the exchange rate. We will not print a conversion on this page, because it would be wrong within the week. We will work out what it means for your claim when we speak.
If the vehicle was uninsured or the driver was never traced
Being hit by an uninsured driver, or by one who drove off, does not leave you without a claim. The Motor Insurers’ Bureau exists for exactly these two situations and is funded by every insurer writing motor cover in the United Kingdom. Which of its two agreements applies depends on whether the driver was identified.
The driver was identified but uninsured
The claim is made under the MIB’s Uninsured Drivers’ Agreement, which covers claims against an identified driver who had no valid insurance in place. An unlicensed or improperly insured private hire vehicle falls here.
The driver was never identified
The claim is made under the Untraced Drivers’ Agreement. That covers a driver who drove away, and one who refused to give their details or gave false ones.
Report the collision to the police if that has not already happened, and keep the incident reference. An MIB application needs it, and it is far easier to get in the weeks after the accident than a year later. We make the application for you. The MIB agreements also carry their own notification requirements, separate from the three year limit below, which is a reason to deal with this early.
How much compensation for a public transport injury claim?
What decides it is the injury, how long it lasts, and what it cost you, and the first two of those come from a medical report rather than from the phone call.
General damages for the injury are assessed against the Judicial College Guidelines, now in their 18th edition, published on 9 April 2026. That is the book the other side’s insurer will be working from too. Passenger injury compensation then has your financial losses added on top, and on public transport claims that means lost earnings, treatment, travel and the replacement of anything damaged in the fall.
Where the claim is a road one worth up to £5,000 for the injury, and the injury is whiplash, the tariff figures in the portal section above are what the insurer will open with. That is worth knowing before you answer an early offer.
Is there an average settlement for a bus accident?
Not one worth quoting, and that is the honest answer rather than a way of avoiding the question. Bus accident compensation runs from the £275 at the bottom of the statutory tariff to whatever a medical report supports where someone is left with a lasting disability. A single average across that range is arithmetic rather than information.
What can be said precisely is how the figure is built. If the claim is a road one, the injury is whiplash and it is worth up to £5,000, the tariff decides the injury element and those figures are fixed by law: £275 to £4,830, set out in full in the portal section above. Outside the tariff the injury is valued against the Judicial College Guidelines from your medical report, and compensation for a public transport accident then has your financial losses added to it.
How long do you have to make a claim?
Three years from the date of the accident in most cases, under section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980. For an accident on a flight or a ferry it is two years, as set out above, and it is the exception worth checking before anything else.
If you were under 18, time does not run against you until your eighteenth birthday, so you have until you are 21. If the injured person lacks capacity to conduct a claim, the three years may not have started at all. A court has a discretion under section 33 to allow a claim brought late, but it is a discretion and never something to rely on. If you are close to the deadline, that is a reason to ring today rather than a reason not to ring.
Evidence that supports a public transport accident claim
One thing here is genuinely time-sensitive. Operators overwrite CCTV on a cycle measured in weeks, so the sooner someone asks them to preserve it, the better.
Did not get anyone’s details? Passengers rarely do. Operators keep records of who was driving and when, and we request them.
No Win No Fee public transport accident claims
A No Win No Fee agreement, properly called a Conditional Fee Agreement, means there is nothing to pay upfront. If the claim does not succeed, you do not pay us for our work, subject to the terms of your agreement.
If it succeeds, a success fee agreed with you in advance is deducted from your compensation, and insurance is usually arranged to cover the other side’s costs. You will see the percentage in writing, and have it explained, before you sign anything.If it succeeds, a success fee agreed with you in advance is deducted from your compensation, and insurance is usually arranged to cover the other side’s costs. You will see the percentage in writing, and have it explained, before you sign anything.
You will see the full terms in writing before your claim begins.
Public transport accident claims
your questions answered
Everything you need to know before starting your claim.
Can I claim if I was injured on a bus that braked suddenly?
Usually yes. Being thrown forward while standing, or before you reached a seat, is one of the most common public transport injuries and one passengers most often assume is their own fault. Whether the braking was avoidable is a question for the claim, not for you.
Who do I claim against if I was a passenger?
The transport operator, another road user, the company managing a station, or more than one of them. You do not need to work this out before contacting us. If the other driver was never traced or had no insurance, there is a route to compensation through the Motor Insurers’ Bureau.
What if I did not report it at the time?
You can still claim. Plenty of people get off the bus, feel shaken but able to carry on, and only realise the next morning how badly they were hurt. Reporting it helps, but it is not a requirement. We will look for the operator’s own records, which often exist even when nobody made a formal report.
How do I get the CCTV from a bus or train?
We ask the operator to preserve and release it. The important thing is speed, because footage is routinely overwritten within weeks, so a request made early is far more likely to succeed than one made months later. The route, the time and roughly where you were sitting is usually enough for them to find it.
How much compensation could I get?
It depends on the injury, how long it lasts and what it cost you. General damages are assessed against the Judicial College Guidelines, now in their 18th edition, and your financial losses are added on top. We will give you a range once there is a medical report, and not before.
How long do I have to make a claim?
Three years from the accident in most cases. For an accident on a flight it is two years, and for one on a ferry or a cruise it is also two. If you were under 18 the three years start at your eighteenth birthday.
Can I claim as a taxi passenger if the drivers blame each other?
Yes, and you do not have to wait for them to agree. Whether your driver or the other one was at fault, you were a passenger in neither position to prevent it. The argument about shares of blame is between their insurers.
Does the £190,000 minimum apply to my local bus journey?
No. That figure comes from Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 181/2011, and Article 2 applies it to regular services with a scheduled distance of 250 km or more, and to coach tours and similar occasional services. A local route is below that threshold. Your claim is unaffected, it simply rests on the ordinary duty of care.
What if I was not wearing a seat belt in the taxi?
You can still claim. Not wearing one may reduce the compensation to reflect your share of the responsibility, but it does not prevent a claim. If the belt was missing, broken or inaccessible, that is the operator’s failing rather than yours.
I was hurt at the station rather than on the train. Can I still claim?
Yes, and most rail injuries happen that way. Responsibility can sit with the train operator, the company managing the station or the infrastructure owner, and working out which is our job
Do I have to go to court?
Most claims settle without a hearing. If one is needed we prepare it with you and go with you. Nothing is accepted without your agreement, and we advise you before you decide.
Find out where you stand
Tell us what you remember, even if that is not much. We will tell you whether there is a claim worth bringing and what it would involve. If we do not think there is, we will say so.
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Other road traffic claims we handle
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The CCTV that would show what happened is usually wiped within weeks, which is the one reason not to leave this. A short conversation costs nothing and puts you under no obligation.
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