Injured While Using Public Transportation? Legal Steps After a Bus or Train Accident

If you’ve been injured on a bus or train, your first priority is medical care, but your second must be legal protection. Because public transit involves government entities and "common carrier" laws, you often have significantly less time, sometimes as little as 6 months, to file a notice of claim compared to a standard car accident.

When you board a bus or train, you are a client of a common carrier. Under the law, these entities owe you a heightened duty of care. However, because many of these systems are taxpayer-funded, they are also shielded by sovereign immunity.

As your advocate, my goal is to strip away the red tape and ensure that a "government entity" is held to the same accountability as any other negligent driver.

(1) Seek Medical Attention Immediately After the Crash

Your health is the only thing that matters in the moments right after a crash. Everything else can wait.

The biggest mistake I see clients make is walking away from the scene because they think they feel fine. If you walk away from the accident scene without seeing a doctor, you are handing the insurance company a massive gift. They will look at your claim later and say you must not have been hurt that badly. They will argue that your injuries came from something else that happened days later. They will claim you are exaggerating your pain for money.

Do not give them that support. Go to the hospital immediately. Go to an urgent care clinic if the emergency room is too full. Let a doctor examine you and document everything in a medical chart. This creates a paper trail that links your injuries directly to the accident. It proves that you were hurt when you said you were hurt. It provides an objective medical opinion that is much harder for an insurance adjuster to ignore.

(2) Report the Accident to Authorities 

You cannot rely on the bus driver or train conductor to tell the whole truth about what happened. They are worried about their jobs and their pensions. They might downplay the incident to their supervisors or claim it was a minor bump. They might not even report it at all if there is no major property damage visible on the bus.

You have to take charge of the situation. Call the police yourself. Make sure they come to the scene and file an official police report. This report is a neutral third-party account of what happened. It will list the date and time and weather conditions and parties involved. It serves as the foundation for your entire legal case.

You also need to make sure the transit agency files their own incident report. Ask the driver for an incident number or a report number before you leave the scene. If they refuse to give it to you, then note down the bus number, the route number, and the time of day. Write down a physical description of the driver.

This documentation is very important. I have handled cases where the transit authority tried to deny the bus was even at the location of the accident. Without a report or ticket stub or witness account, it becomes your word against theirs. That is a fight you want to avoid if possible.

(3) Gather Evidence at the Scene Before It Disappears

Evidence at a public transit accident scene has a very short shelf life. Buses get repaired and put back into service within days. Security footage gets taped over or deleted automatically after a week. Witnesses wander off and forget what they saw. You need to capture what you can while you are still there.

Use your phone to take pictures of everything. Photograph the damage to the vehicles involved. Photograph the position of the bus on the road. Photograph any skid marks or debris on the pavement. Photograph your own injuries if they are visible, like cuts or bruises.

Witnesses are incredibly valuable in these cases. The other passengers on the bus do not have a financial stake in the outcome. They are not biased. They just want to tell the truth about what they saw. However, you have to get their information before they leave.

Do not just rely on the police to get witness names. Officers are busy, and they might miss people in the chaos. Ask your fellow passengers for their names and phone numbers yourself. Just a quick text or a note in your phone is enough. Tell them you might need them to verify what happened later on. Most people are happy to help a fellow passenger.

(4) Compensation You Can Recover for Your Injuries

When we file a claim for a public transit accident, we are fighting to get you back to where you were before the crash happened. We know money cannot fix everything. However, it is the only tool the legal system provides to make you whole.

We look for compensation in several key areas to ensure your future is secure.

• Medical Expenses and Future Care

This category includes everything from the ambulance ride to the surgery to the physical therapy sessions. We also calculate the cost of future medical care. If you are going to need treatment for the rest of your life, the settlement needs to pay for that now.

• Lost Wages and Earning Capacity

If you missed work because you were in the hospital or recovering at home, you deserve to be paid for that time. If your injuries are so severe that you cannot go back to your old job, we fight for compensation for your loss of earning capacity.

• Pain and Suffering Damages

This covers the physical pain and the emotional trauma of the accident. It is the sleepless nights. It is the anxiety you feel every time you see a bus. It is the fact that you cannot pick up your grandchildren anymore because your back hurts too much. These are real losses, and they deserve real compensation.

The injuries in these cases can be severe. Buses and trains are massive vehicles. They do not stop quickly. When they crash, the passengers get thrown around violently. We see a lot of whiplash and neck injuries. We see broken bones from people falling into metal poles or seats. We see traumatic brain injuries from heads striking windows. We see slip and fall injuries from wet steps or icy platforms.

No matter the injury, the goal is the same. We want to make sure the responsible party pays for the damage they caused to your life.

Why You Need Robert J. Johnson to Fight for You

Trying to handle this legal system alone is dangerous. The transit authority has a team of lawyers whose only job is to deny claims. They know the rules better than you do. They know about the deadlines and the immunity defenses. They will use every trick in the book to pay you as little as possible.

You need someone on your side who knows the game.

My team understands how to investigate these accidents properly. We know how to pull the black box data from the bus to see how fast it was going. We know how to subpoena the maintenance records to see if the brakes were faulty. We know how to interview witnesses and depose drivers effectively.

We also know how to value your claim correctly. The insurance adjuster might offer you a quick settlement of a few thousand dollars. They will tell you it is a good deal. They will tell you it is the best you are going to get. But they are not factoring in your future medical needs or your long-term pain. Once you sign that release, you can never come back for more money.

If you or someone you love has been injured on a bus or a train or a subway in our city, please call my office. The consultation is free. We will sit down and look at your case, and I will give you my honest opinion on what we can do. And remember that we work on a contingency basis. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. You have nothing to lose by making the call.

Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes and does not form an attorney-client relationship. For help with a specific legal issue, reach out to Robert J. Johnson.