This study looks at the development of fire safety on buses in Finland over the past decade. The contents of Swedish fire safety inspections of buses in connec-tion with obligatory periodical inspections are described, as well as the impact of such inspections on fire safety. According to statistics, the number of bus fires in Finland has almost doubled over the last 10 years, although only slight changes have occurred in the number of buses and kilometres driven. The reasons for this increase could not be established. Fire safety of buses has been improved by increasing the size of fire extinguishers on board from 2 kg to 6 kg, by adding ap-ertures in the engine compartment for fire extinguishers, and by paying more at-tention to fire safety aspects in the regular maintenance of vehicles. Automatic fire extinguishers are still rare on buses. Even though bus fires rarely spread to the passenger compartment, fire resistance of interior materials is crucial for the pre-vention of catastrophic accidents. The implementation of specific fire safety in-spection in connection with periodic inspection of buses in Sweden in 2001 does not show a decrease in the number of reported fires, but it roughly halved the pro-portion of buses that failed the inspection because of fire safety issues.