Understanding the safety duty requirements for road-based public passenger services

If you provide road-based public passenger services, you have legal obligations to manage safety risks. Find out if you must comply and what your responsibilities are.

Who needs to follow the safety duty requirements

The safety duty requirements apply to everyone involved in providing road-based public passenger services, such as services in:

  • buses (light and heavy)
  • taxis
  • limousines
  • booked hire vehicles
  • other vehicles used to provide public passenger services.

A 'public passenger service' is a service that transports passengers and meets one or more of these conditions:

  • passengers pay a fare or another form of payment is received
  • it is provided as part of a business (unless it only transports its own employees)
  • it is a community transport or courtesy transport service
  • it is a driver service (where the vehicle is included).

Community and courtesy transport services

The safety duty requirements also apply to community and courtesy transport services, even when passenger transport is not their core business.

Community and courtesy transport services might include:

  • Community transport services—services funded under the Community Transport Program, National Disability Insurance Scheme, Commonwealth Aged Care Program or other government program.
  • Courtesy transport services—free passenger transport provided using a vehicle owned or leased by the business or entity, for example
    • picking up guests of your hotel from the airport
    • transporting customers to a tourist attraction
    • taking customers to work or local destinations while their vehicle is serviced
    • picking children up from home and taking them to a childcare centre
    • taking students to and from sporting grounds in school-owned or leased buses
    • driving customers to and from clubs.

Learn more about community transport services and courtesy transport services.

Transport services for locally significant events

The safety duty requirements also apply to transport services for locally significant events.

A 'locally significant event service' is a free public passenger service that:

  • operates in or near a local government area with a population of less than 2,500 people
  • provides transport to or from an event held no more than twice a year
  • is for an event open to the general public (whether free or with an entry fee)
  • has no more than 2 vehicles available at any one time to provide the service.

For example, an annual show day or race day.

Exclusions from the safety duty requirements

The safety duty requirements do not apply to:

  • services provided in light rail vehicles
  • volunteer associations that operate solely with volunteers and do not have duties under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act).

Volunteer associations and volunteers

This section explains what is meant by a volunteer association and a volunteer:

  • Volunteer association—a group of volunteers working together for one or more community purposes, where none of the volunteers employs anyone to carry out work for the association.
  • Volunteer—a person acting on a voluntary basis who does not receive a wage or salary but may be reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses.

Find out when volunteers have duties under the WHS Act.

Your responsibilities

If the safety duty requirements apply to you, you have legal responsibilities to manage safety risks. You must:

  • Understand and meet your safety duties

    • Duty holders must take a proactive approach to identifying and controlling safety risks that they can influence or control. Read safety duties and duty holders for road-based public passenger services.

  • Know and follow the safety management plan (SMP) in place for the service

    • The responsible duty holder for the service will have a plan that identifies hazards, assesses risks, outlines actions to eliminate or reduce risks, and assigns responsibility to ensure the safety of everyone involved in providing or using the public passenger service. Learn more about SMPs.

  • Comply with legal requirements

    • Failure to comply could have serious safety consequences and may result in enforcement action and penalties.

Why these requirements exist

These requirements are in place to help protect passengers, workers and the wider community by ensuring safety risks are identified early and managed effectively before incidents occur.

They are designed to:

  • make safety a shared responsibility across the industry
  • support continuous improvement in safety practices
  • provide flexibility for industry to adapt to emerging risks, including changes in technology, vehicles and service delivery models.

They ensure that everyone involved in providing road-based public passenger services takes responsibility for managing the risks they can influence or control.

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