In light of recent road deaths the director of the Public Transportation Board (PTB) said he would consider the option of offering a late night bus service - but was a little sceptical about the demand.

Dan Simmons could not see how he would be able to get young people off of their cycles to take a bus instead.

He added that parents needed to take some responsibility by making sure there was cab money in the house in the event that their teens were intoxicated and needed an alternative route home.

He said the dynamics of offering a late night service may not relate to the Island as they do in metropolitan cities, like London and New York and suggested a scenario of a young person living a bit of a distance from the main roads.

"If you have a teenager living on the top of Khyber Pass, in Warwick, who was going into town at night, will they want to walk over the hill when they are returning home after 3 a.m.?" asked Mr. Simmons.

"I think a door to door type of service is better for that. But I would be prepared to run a test service, but it would be a question of load factors as on the "night train", the service tapers off.

"We would need the numbers and the danger would be to run the buses when there was no demand for the service."

Mr. Simmons felt that many of the current accidents were because of the power of the cycles today. He said: "When I was young there were Mobylettes and Cyrus' and if two people were going over a hill one would have to get off and walk, and the rider would have to pedal.

"Today the cycles easily carry two or more people over a hill quite quickly.

"But before the helmet laws were introduced, there would have many more deaths among young people - there were easily 20 to 25 deaths a year on the roads."

Mr. Simmons added that parents needed to take more responsibility for their teens' safety and if they were seen to be riding in an unsafe manner than parents needed to stop them.

The director, who is a father of two girls in their early twenties, said most parents bought their children cycles as soon as they turned 16, but he said sometimes they were not responsible enough. "One day after I had dropped off to work, I was nearing Belmont when I saw one of my daughters on the back of her bike with her boyfriend overtaking a bus on the corner - almost smashing into my car," said Mr. Simmons.

"I did an immediate U-turn and followed them back to her school and I banned my daughter from riding and told her that it was her bike to ride, not her boyfriend's.

"I went through so much in those few seconds - and the worst thing was that if something fatal had happened I would have been in the right for the death of my child. I couldn't help but think - if I was two seconds ahead of where I was, my daughter would have flew threw my windscreen at me."

In closing Mr. Simmons said the PTB would look into whether the public wanted a late night bus service and whether it would be financially viable before making a decision.