Road safety services for low-cost international coach transportation

According to recent European Commission (EC) transport statistics, coach travel is the safest and greenest mode of road transportation in Europe, and yet there are a significant number of buses and coaches involved in crashes every year. In order to meet the zero road fatalities by 2020 objective set by the EC, the coach travel industry need to leverage the benefits of emerging Intelligent Transport System (ITS) services. However the low-cost operating environment for this industry and the lack of homogenous regulations across countries creates a number of challenges for the adoption of such services for international coach travel. This paper presents some of the key issues faced by international coach transportation and ITS services that can address them; the deployment challenges for high-value services such as passenger tracking; the needs of the passengers and coach operators along with their perspective on the services – and concludes with a discussion about the tensions between the deployment and user needs perspective – highlighting challenging areas that need to be tackled by any transport stakeholder who wants to provide or implement ITS services for the international coach industry.