Bus Safety Act 2009


The Bus Safety Act 2009 is a law enacted by the Parliament of the State of Victoria, Australia and is the prime statute regulating the safety of bus operations in Victoria. The Act was developed as part of the Transport Legislation Review conducted by the Department of Transport between 2004 and 2010 and is aimed at preventing deaths and injuries arising from bus operations in Victoria and establishes a modern "best practice" regulatory framework to assist in maintaining and improving the Victorian bus industry's good safety record.
The Act continued regulatory control over the operation of large buses and introduced safety standards for the small or mini-bus sector which comprises 40% of the Victorian bus fleet. Controls over large and small buses comprise permissions such as accreditation and registration. In addition, the Act introduced broad based "safety duties" for bus operators and all others who have a significant role in providing both commercial and non-commercial bus services. The Act also extended the range of enforcement powers and sanctions available to the safety regulator - the Director, Transport Safety operating as Transport Safety Victoria - and operates to encourage greater safety awareness across all types of bus operations.
The Act was the State's first dedicated statute on the subject and replaced provisions in the Public Transport Competition Act 1995, which was renamed Bus Services Act 1995. The Bus Safety Act forms part of the transport policy and legislation framework in Victoria set by the Transport Integration Act 2010, and its provisions are subject to the overarching transport system vision, transport system objectives and decision making principles set out in that Act. The Bus Safety Act was passed in late March 2009 and commenced on 31 December 2010.
The responsible Minister for the Act is the Minister for Public and Active Transport.

Outline

The stated purpose of the Bus Safety Act Act is "...to provide for the safe operation of bus services in Victoria". The objects of the Act center on the safety of bus operations, management of safety risks, continuous improvement in bus safety management, public confidence in the safety of bus transport, appropriate stakeholder involvement and the existence of a safety culture among bus service providers.
The Act also contains a number of overarching policy principles relating to shared responsibility for safety, accountability for managing safety risks, enforcement, transparency, consistency and stakeholder involvement.
Image:Ventura Bus at Chadstone.jpg|thumb|Ventura Bus Lines bus parked at the Chadstone Shopping Centre bus terminus.
The Act establishes a regulatory scheme with the following key elements -
  • a number of performance-based safety duties which apply to the broad range of parties who can affect bus safety outcomes
  • an accreditation scheme concentrating on key commercial bus industry operators and operators of local bus services
  • a registration scheme for operators of small buses and large non commercial buses
  • a broad range of sanctions and penalties
  • cost benefit protections against excessive action by the regulator which affect industry participants
  • alcohol and drug management controls on bus safety workers through a requirement for operators to develop and implement an alcohol and drug management policy
  • provision for the making of codes of practice to provide guidance on compliance to regulated rail industry parties.

    The case for a new regulatory scheme

The Bus Safety Act was developed as a response to growing bus operations and the emergence of a greater safety risks and in recognition of the deficiencies of the previous regulatory scheme.
Before the BSA, bus safety in Victoria was regulated by an operator accreditation scheme in the former Public Transport Competition Act 1995 and by miscellaneous prescriptive offences in the Transport Regulations 2005. Compared with best practice regimes, the previous scheme was outmoded and inadequate.
Some of the problems with the previous regime were -
  • it focused almost solely on the bus operator and ignored the safety role of other key industry participants who can affect safety outcomes. In essence, the scheme ignored the bus safety chain of responsibility
  • bus accreditation tends to focus on the ability to operate rather than on safety outcomes more generally
  • conditions of accreditation and the passenger vehicles regulations tend to be prescriptive rather than performance-based, and do not result in the general safety awareness and proactive risk management required to develop a safety culture
  • the regulator had limited sanctions available when safety breaches occurred and was often forced to choose between sanctions that were either too strong or too weak
  • the scheme did not apply to all 'buses'. The previous legislative definition of 'bus' was a passenger vehicle with more than 12 seating positions, including the driver. This missed mini buses and was inconsistent, not only with the requirements in most Australian jurisdictions, but also with the relevant Australian Design Rules which regulated vehicle construction in Australia.

    Parts

The Act is divided into nine parts:
  • Preliminary
  • Principles of Bus Safety
  • Bus Safety Duties
  • Accreditation and Registration
  • Alcohol and Drug Management Policy
  • Review of Decisions
  • Codes of Practice
  • General
  • Amendments to Other Acts and Repeal of Part

    Coverage

The Bus Safety Act regulates the safety compliance of most bus transport in Victoria including buses operated both commercially and non commercially. A major change made by the Act was the extension of coverage to small buses.
The former Public Transport Competition Act regime focused exclusively on large buses. The BSA extended the definition of 'bus' in line with the Australian Design Rules, which define a bus as a passenger vehicle with 10 or more seating positions including the driver. The definition refers to buses 'as built'. This means that if a vehicle is built as a bus, subsequent modifications, including reducing the number of seats, will not alter its status under the scheme.
Accordingly, a bus built with 10 seats remains a bus even if some of those seats are removed. This ensures that safety regulation is not avoided by making alterations to the vehicle. Some flexibility is provided by allowing for vehicles and services to be opted in or out of the definition.
For example, a vehicle that would otherwise be a bus, but is licensed as a taxi, is excluded so that the operator is not subject to double regulation.

Duties

Chain of responsibility

In order to foster more proactive risk management in the bus industry, Part 3 of the BSA imposes performance-based duties of care on all industry participants who are in a position to influence the safety of the operation - what is called the 'chain of responsibility'.
Safety duties apply to all bus services, both commercial and non-commercial, and to all buses regardless of seating capacity. The primary duty holder under the Bus Safety Act is the operator of the bus service, as the person who has effective responsibility and control over the whole operation.
Safety duties are also imposed on a range of other people including -
  • bus safety workers including drivers, schedulers who set bus timetables, and mechanics and testers who repair or assess vehicle safety
  • procurers - that is, people who procure the bus service, known as the customer in the commercial charter sector
  • people with responsibility for bus stops including people who design, build or maintain the stop and who decide on its location. This was a response to research showing that the most serious hazard associated with bus travel occurs when passengers, especially children, are crossing the road after alighting from the bus. The location and layout of a bus stop is therefore a factor in the level of risk.
All of these persons can clearly affect bus safety. They are required to ensure that, in carrying out their activities, they eliminate risks to health and safety if 'practicable' - or work to reduce those risks 'so far as is reasonably practicable'.
This familiar practicability formula is borrowed from Victoria's Rail Safety Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.

Safety culture

Duties of this kind are a key aspect of modern safety regulation and tend to create a shared safety awareness, a proactive approach to safety management and adaptability to new circumstances - in other words, a safety culture.
The framework of safety duties in the Act seeks to give practical effect to the so-called "chain of responsibility" concept in the bus safety sector. It seeks to identify the parties who are in a sufficient position of control over risks, in this case to safety, and to allocate responsibility by law accordingly.
Penalties for a breach of safety duties are potentially high, with maximum penalties reflecting those that can be imposed on duty holders in the rail sector and in the OH and S Act. Penalties vary among natural person and body corporate offenders.
The general approach taken in the Act - to encourage a safety culture by imposing safety duties and risk management obligations on persons in a chain of responsibility - is strongly supported by the report on transport safety regulation released in October 2008 by the NSW Efficient Transportation Marketplace Working Group. The report effectively endorsed Victoria's and the nation's rail safety regime directions and suggested that a similar approach, particularly focusing on performance-based duties, be taken with all road transport.

Nature of duties

The typical formulation of a safety duty specifies that persons covered by Part 3 of the Act must satisfy in this category is that they must "so far as is reasonably practicable, ensure the safety of the bus service".
The formulation of the duty can, however, vary according to the party covered. For example, a bus safety worker is required to take "...reasonable measures to ensure the safety of persons who may be affected by the acts or omissions of the bus safety worker."