Seatbelt laws again under scrutiny after fatal Hunter Valley bus crash

Road laws in New South Wales require all bus passengers to use seatbelts if the vehicle is fitted with them, but experts say compliance is a grey area and question whether belts could have prevented all 10 deaths in Sunday’s Hunter Valley crash.

The causes of the crash remain under investigation, and it is unclear whether passengers were wearing seatbelts.

While declining to comment on the specifics of the crash, the premier, Chris Minns, was open to legal changes about seatbelts if the investigation showed they were needed.

“We will be in constant communication with NSW police,” he told the ABC on Tuesday morning.

“[If] there’s a recommendation made to us about law changes in relation to safety on buses or coaches or in cars and vans in NSW, we’ll of course, take action.

“If there’s seatbelts on a coach or a bus, you are legally required to wear them.”

Commuter buses in Australia are not required to have seatbelts, but national design rules mean they are now standard on coaches, according to Geoffrey Clifton from the University of Sydney’s Transport and Logistics Management Institute.

In buses fitted with seatbelts – which the Volvo coach involved in the Hunter crash reportedly was – everyone on board is required to use them. But it is not the driver’s responsibility to ensure compliance.

Clifton said Australia’s road laws were broadly in line with international standards in comparable countries. He said local laws were broadly strengthened following a series of serious accidents in the 1980s and 90s.

These include a 1989 crash in which 20 people died near Grafton in NSW, and then two months later, the collision of two coaches near Kempsey in NSW which left 35 dead – Australia’s worst road disaster.

But Clifton said enforcement of the seatbelt rules differs from state to state, and laws make it difficult to ensure compliance.

Bus companies with vehicles equipped with seatbelts must ensure they are in working order. Drivers are required to wear their seatbelts, and are legally responsible for ensuring they comply themselves, but this responsibility does not extend to enforcing the rule for passengers.

“They don’t have the authority to force passengers to wear seatbelts,” Clifton said.

Ultimately, it’s up to local police to enforce the laws, and they have the power to fine or penalise passengers for not wearing seatbelts.

As part of a recent strengthening of the laws in NSW, school buses in regional areas of the state must have seatbelts, and drivers are required to verbally remind students they are required to use them.

That is not the case for other buses, but Clifton noted all bus companies in NSW must have a management system in place that identifies hazards unique to their operations.

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On Tuesday morning the NSW premier, Chris Minns, said his government would “of course take action” if police recommended law changes to improve safety in the light of the Hunter Valley crash.

“If you’re asking me more broadly about the wearing of seatbelts on coaches, it’s really important that the message go out that if there are seatbelts on buses and coaches in New South Wales, you are legally responsible to wear them,” Minns told the ABC.

“You must wear them. It’s the law in New South Wales that that’s the case, and notwithstanding what’s happened in the last 24 hours, that needs to be an unambiguous message to people in the state.”

Prof Teresa Senserrick, director of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Road Safety Research, said that while police could conduct checks to ensure buses passengers were wearing seatbelts, a more effective strategy to increase seatbelt compliance could be to set harsher fines or punishments and to strongly communicate them.

“Certainly advertising signage of what penalties will be, whether that’s on signs in buses or other ways, could see people be more attune to the laws,” she said.

She raised the ideas following observations gathered by mobile phone detection cameras deployed in Queensland and NSW recently that detected a surge in non-compliance with seatbelts.

“It was quite a surprise to everyone how many people were not using their seatbelts … We’ve become quite complacent while we’ve focused on speeding and drink driving.”

But Senserrick questioned whether conventional seat belts would have saved lives in the Hunter crash, because the bus rolled over after leaving the road.

“It’s the rollover crashes that are really problematic. A seatbelt can help in a lot of circumstances, but it doesn’t necessarily help in a rollover crash, particularly when a vehicle has rolled over more than once.

“If you want the highest safety standard, look to motor racing, where they have harness style belts,” Senserrick said.