The head of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada is slamming the federal government for failing to take significant action after the 2013 bus-train crash that might have reduced the risk of injury to passengers in Friday’s deadly crash.
“Friday’s bus accident in Ottawa, coming on the heels of the 2018 Humboldt bus tragedy, and the earlier 2013 Ottawa bus-train accident, not to mention other examples, reinforces the urgent need for Transport Canada to take action on implementing crashworthiness standards for commercial buses,” TSB chair Kathy Fox wrote in a strongly worded statement released Monday.
The TSB made just such a recommendation when it investigated the 2013 bus-train accident that killed six people in Ottawa. Because a Via Rail train was involved in that crash, the federally mandated TSB investigated. Among its recommendations was that Transport Canada implement crashworthiness standards for passenger buses.
Currently, this country’s safety standards for motor vehicles contain no requirements for frontal-impact, side-impact, rollover or crush protection for vehicles in excess of 26,000 pounds, which includes most transit buses.
“As a result, buses in this weight category can have different structural features that may not adequately protect the travelling public,” Fox wrote.
The TSB also recommended buses be equipped with an on-board event data recorder, similar to those on airplanes to expedite investigations and accurate data collection — something that has not been implemented.
Since the recommendations were issued in 2015, Transport Canada has undertaken some work. “However, significant progress has not yet occurred and the safety deficiencies remain outstanding.”
The board is calling on Transport Canada to expedite its work.
In an update published last year, the TSB reported that Transport Canada is searching for a bus shell for testing “but has not been successful.”

The statement from TSB pointing to Transport Canada’s failure to make buses safer comes amid calls — including from parents who lost children in the Humboldt Broncos
junior hockey team bus crash — for the independent agency to investigate Friday’s crash.
The investigation, the group said in an open letter, is needed to make our overall transportation system safer.
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Graham Larkin, Ottawa-based head of the road safety advocacy organization...
said it is unfair to expect Ottawa police to be able to conduct a full safety investigation that could focus on the systemic factors that potentially played into the crash. “Do police have the resources for a full investigation of this kind? The answer is no. We are talking about safe systems. The police are not experts in safe systems.”
In Sweden, which has the lowest rate of traffic fatalities in the world, the focus is on building preventative systems. “They say the onus is not on the individual or user but on the state to implement fail-safe systems.”
Canada, said Larkin, is not serious about building preventative infrastructure. He noted that there had been a previous deadly crash at the intersection where the Humboldt Broncos bus was slammed by a transport truck. A roundabout at that site would have prevented the subsequent tragedy.
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Meanwhile, Fox of the Transportation Safety Board said it would continue to push for changes “so that bus passengers in Canada don’t have to worry about the safety of the vehicle they are taking to work, home or to a hockey arena.”
