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Hong Kong’s controversial bus seat belt law will go down in history as one of the city?s shortest-lived regulations.

It came into effect on January 25, but five days later, Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan announced that the government would repeal it, citing “technical deficiencies” in the provision. The law was officially revoked one week later, on Friday.

The controversy stemmed from the law’s sweeping nature, which required all seated bus passengers to wear a seat belt or risk a fine of up to HK$5,000 or three months in jail.

Its implementation quickly sparked a strong public backlash, with passengers complaining that the seat belts were too tight or too difficult to unbuckle. There were also incidents of suspected criminal damage to seat belts on buses.

Even before it was enacted, the law puzzled many, especially since buses in Hong Kong allow passengers to stand while travelling.

The government insisted that, under the law, all bus passengers must wear a seat belt when seated. However, in a viral social media post, a former lawmaker pointed out that the provision’s wording appeared to cover only buses registered after the law took effect. The following day, Chan announced the repeal, saying the law could not adequately “reflect its legislative intent.”

The swift policy U-turn has raised concerns about Hong Kong’s legislative process, specifically why multiple layers of government officials and lawmakers failed to notice a critical flaw in a law that would affect over 3.7 million people who take the bus every day.

HKFP looks at how the legislation unfolded.

The law was gazetted on September 5 and tabled in the Legislative Council (LegCo) on September 10.

On September 18, a LegCo subcommittee consisting of 15 lawmakers reviewed the law. At that time, transport officials said the mandatory seat belt rule would apply only to ?newly registered buses.?

No lawmaker raised concerns over the related provisions or suggested any amendment at that meeting, and the law remained operative in its gazetted form. The wording adopted was that bus operators must install seat belts on “every bus first registered on or after 25 January 2026” ? the date the rule came into effect ? and passengers were required to wear a seat belt on those buses.

However, the government’s press releases about the seat belt law showed a discrepancy.

In a September 5 statement announcing the legislation?s gazettal, the government said the new rule would apply to “all newly registered public transport vehicles and commercial vehicles,” including buses. It aligned with the wording of the law.

But in a subsequent statement, published on November 3, the Transport Department highlighted that the mandatory seat belt rule would apply to all buses, “whether newly registered or not,” contradicting the previous press release.

On January 8, roughly two weeks before the law came into force, the Transport Department issued another reminder to the public, highlighting that bus passengers must wear a seat belt whenever it is available. In various public remarks, Chan and other transport officials also said the rule would apply to all passengers.

On January 29, amid backlash over the new law, solicitor and former LegCo member Doreen Kong ? who sat on the subcommittee scrutinising the legislation last year ? wrote on Facebook that the rule should apply only to buses ?first registered on or after 25 January 2026,? citing the provision?s exact wording.

According to local media reports, Chief Executive John Lee was so concerned by Kong’s Facebook post that he ordered transport officials to promptly acknowledge any mistakes and devise remedies.

When Chan, the transport minister, announced the repeal on January 30, she acknowledged that the law failed to reflect the legislative intent, which was to extend the seat belt wearing requirement to all buses.

In a Facebook post on January 31, Kong denied accusations that the LegCo subcommittee had been careless in reviewing the law. She said government officials and legislative documents had all stated that the rule would apply only to newly registered buses.

The reason for the authorities? discrepancy was unclear.

At a press conference on Friday, Chan announced the official repeal of the law and said a review was needed for her bureau in the wake of the saga.

?The relevant teams did not realise the deficiencies in the provisions and were not fully accurate in explaining them, leading to different understandings of the law,? she told reporters in Cantonese. ?I think we must conduct a review because of this incident.?

The idea of requiring bus passengers to wear seat belts in Hong Kong was already explored nearly 20 years ago. At that time, the authorities concluded that there were “practical difficulties” in enforcing such a regulation.

According to a Transport Department study in 2007, which was submitted to LegCo, the challenges mainly stemmed from buses allowing standing passengers.

?As far as we know, so far no country has imposed legal requirements for fitting or wearing of seat belts on passenger seats of buses designed for urban use with standing passengers,? it read.

Fast-forward to February 2018. A bus crash in Tai Po, which killed 19 people and injured 62 others, thrust the issue of bus safety back into the spotlight. In the wake of the tragedy, the government established an independent committee to review the operation and safety measures of the city’s franchised buses.

The issue of the seat belt rule on buses was revisited during the review. Bus operators expressed concerns about the costs of installing seat belts across their fleets and the potentially limited safety benefits if passengers were not required to wear them.

Notably, in a submission to the committee, the Transport Department said it had reviewed the seat belt regulations in several jurisdictions. None required urban buses or those allowing standing passengers to install seat belts, the department told the committee.

In its December 2018 final report, the committee recommended that authorities conduct a cost-benefit analysis for compulsory seat belt installation on buses, but stopped short of suggesting a blanket seat belt law. The government adopted the recommendation.

Back to the present day. In late January, as Chan promoted the new law, she claimed it was consistent with those of other jurisdictions ? including mainland China, the UK, Australia, and Singapore ? and aligned with the 2018 review committee?s recommendations.

Her claims, however, were not supported by the committee?s report nor by the Transport Department?s submission at that time.

The turning point in the government’s stance on a seat belt law came in December 2021, after another fatal bus crash killed one passenger and injured 11.

Then-transport commissioner Rosanna Law told a radio programme that the government was studying the prospect of legislating for a mandatory seat belt requirement on buses after the accident.

In July 2022, the government consulted LegCo’s Panel on Transport on proposed amendments to the city’s Road Traffic Ordinance, which included the mandatory seat belt rule.

Speaking at LegCo at that time, Edward Mak, deputy secretary for transport and logistics, said the proposal was to extend seat belt requirements to “newly registered” buses and other vehicles previously exempt from the law.

Three years later, in September 2025, the Transport Department said during a LegCo briefing that it had consulted the bus industry and other public bodies on road safety, including the Transport Advisory Committee and the Road Safety Council. However, no territory-wide public consultation was conducted.

In the wake of the policy U-turn, Chan pledged on Friday to consult the public before reintroducing the seat belt requirement.

“We must listen to public opinions… so we can analyse different solutions and options,” she said.

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x Hans Tse is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in local politics, academia, and media transformation. He was previously a social science researcher, with writing published in the Social Movement Studies and Social Transformation of Chinese Societies journals. He holds an M.Phil in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Before joining HKFP, he also worked as a freelance reporter for Initium between 2019 and 2021, where he covered the height - and aftermath - of the 2019 protests, as well as the sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.

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