The accident rate of public minibuses is 7.5 times that of all other Hong Kong vehicles, a statistic that translated last year into 21 people killed and 187 severely injured.
Despite the alarming figures, the Transport Department has dragged its feet on passenger safety.
It still allows 45 per cent of the minibuses to operate without passenger seat belts and has been slow to insist minibuses are equipped with speed limiters and black boxes, senior investigation officer Denise Wong Wai-fan of the Ombudsman's office said yesterday.
The office said the accident rate of public minibuses was 255.2 per 1,000 minibuses last year, compared with 34.1 per 1,000 for all vehicles.
There are 4,350 public minibuses running across the city - only 0.76 per cent of all Hong Kong vehicles - but in 2008 one in every 20 accidents involved a minibus.
Wong noted that the minibus was the city's most popular mode of public transport after the MTR and buses, carrying 1.85 million commuters a day. In some communities it is the only form of public transport.