Request ID: FOI-2035-2324 Date published: 25 September 2023
You asked
I WOULD LIKE TO REQUEST THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION UNDER FOI LEGISLATION.
1. I would like to request how many accidents / incidents occurred on London Buses due to driver error / mistake for each of the years 2023 (so far - to date 11th Sept 2023), 2022 and 2019.
2. How many of these incidents / accidents resulted in a pay out to the
victim(s) for each of the years specified above.
We answered
Our ref: FOI-2035-2324/GH Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 11 September 2023 asking for information about incidents on buses. Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. 1. I would like to request how many accidents / incidents occurred on London Buses due to driver error / mistake for each of the years 2023 (so far - to date 11th Sept 2023), 2022 and 2019. I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, to provide the information you have requested would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. Under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with requests if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’. There is no category for ‘driver error’ to search for the requested information, and therefore to answer this question we would need to manually review all incidents occurring on London Buses and read the descriptions to ascertain if they involved driver error. In a typical year, there are over 6,000 incidents, and therefore manually checking and compiling the information would be a huge task. 2. How many of these incidents / accidents resulted in a pay out to the victim(s) for each of the years specified above. We would not hold this information. Buses are operated by individual companies who arrange their own insurance and claims handling services. Any claims that we receive in relation to bus related incidents are therefore referred to the individual companies. If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal. Yours sincerely Graham Hurt FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
