In May 1989, the fledgeling ACT Government launched a Bus Safety Rap video, featuring Lyneham High School students, Neighbours actors, and pseudo-American accents.

It was a different world: an age of big hair, leg warmers, and padded shoulders. The USSR and the USA were locked in cold war; and Berlin was still divided by the Wall. Mobile phones were the size of bricks, and had antennae. CDs were only just taking over from cassette tapes and LPs. Computer mice and sound cards were expensive novelties; and the World Wide Web had not flown out and floated wide.

But bus safety never goes out of style, the government says.

Today begins the ACT’s inaugural Bus Safety Week – and the message from that 1989 rap video has, as transport minister Chris Steel puts it, been ‘wrapped’ around ACT buses.

“Passenger safety, especially the safety of school students, has always been a top priority for the ACT Government and for Transport Canberra,” Mr Steel said. “We can count on passengers and road users to prioritise safe practices whether they’re using a bus or whether they’re moving around buses.”

Those safe practices, as relevant now as they were 35 years ago, Mr Steel said, include:

• Don’t step out until the bus has stopped.
• Never walk in front of a bus. Other road users cannot see you, even when the bus has stopped.
• Give buses the room that they need on the road – whether you’re driving a vehicle, or a pedestrian on the side of the road. They are big vehicles, so take longer to stop than cars.
• Avoid distractions around buses – such as mobile phones.

The Transport Canberra fleet has 454 buses, which travel more than 555,000 kilometres a week. Three million bus trips were taken in 2023 – a large number of them by school students.

The 1989 campaign was in response to seven deaths that occurred between 1985 and 1988 around buses.

Matters have improved today, Mr Steel said. Nevertheless: “We see unfortunately a few vulnerable road users and pedestrians that are involved in accidents every year that involve buses.”

The ACT Government has set a Vision Zero of no deaths or serious injuries on Canberra roads.