Very sad article about two buses a day on average crahsing with pedestrians and cyclists.

During the last six years 145,533 bus crashes. With 3,591 pedestrians and 1,219 cyclists injured or killed during that period. Injuries such as little Pollyanna Hope tragically losing a leg while on a pavement.

With London having 8,500 buses that means every year on average each London bus will have nearly 3 crashes (2.85). Even with their very high bus mileage it still seems an outrageous number.

But what I find shocking is that late in 2005 TfL with the First bus group deployed a $700,000 fully immersive Bus simulator to train bus drivers of off the roads. In the US they’ve been shown to help reduce crashes by 43%.

I had the good fortune to spend a day on it trying it out representing the London Cycling Campaign. You can really create a lot of tough driving quickly and repeatedly. Drivers can have what happened played back to them and really learn a lot quikcly. It got wrapped up in a light TV show but that didnt deter me from having a good go on the bus simulator. They threw sleet, storms, throngs of suicidal cyclists. First still say theyre operating it.

What was really surprising was the large insurance claims office at the other end of the bus simulator corridor. Never forgotten that. And with the stats revealed it’s not surprising they need such offices.

But the bus simulators proposed have never been rolled out across London as planned. And we still have an unacceptably high crash rate for fulltime professional drivers.

If you think London Buses need to do better and deploy bus simulators tell London Mayor Boris Johnson at mayor@london.gov.uk and copy me  james.barber@southwark.gov.uk