Hit by a Macon Transit Bus: How a Claim Against MBCTA Actually Works

By Ben Sessions on October 15th, 2026 in Personal Injury

A collision with a city bus looks like an ordinary traffic case and is not one. The Macon-Bibb County Transit Authority is a governmental entity, and that single fact rearranges the deadlines, the available defenses, and the amount that can realistically be recovered.

What MBCTA is

The Macon-Bibb County Transit Authority — also referred to as the Macon Transit Authority — was created in 1980 by an act of the Georgia legislature, succeeding the privately operated Bibb Transit Company that the county had purchased in 1973. It is a component unit of Macon-Bibb County. Its seven-member board is nominated by the Mayor and confirmed by the County Commission, and two members must be transit riders.

It runs fixed-route bus service — ten routes as of 2026 — along with ADA paratransit and an app-based on-demand zone service. The hub is Terminal Station at 200 Cherry Street downtown.

The relevant point for a claim is the first one: created by state legislative act, operating as a component unit of the consolidated government. That makes it a government defendant, not a private bus company.

The deadline question, stated honestly

Because MBCTA is a governmental entity, a claim against it implicates sovereign immunity and a mandatory ante litem notice. Which notice statute and which deadline apply is not a question with a clean published answer.

Georgia’s deadlines differ by defendant type:

Municipalities — six months, O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5.
Counties — twelve months, O.C.G.A. § 36-11-1.
The State — twelve months, O.C.G.A. § 50-21-26.

An authority created by special legislative act can fall under different rules than any of these, depending on the enabling act’s own terms. And Macon-Bibb County itself is doubly complicated: its 2012 charter provides that the consolidated government “shall constitute a municipality and a county, or both,” and we are not aware of a Georgia appellate decision squarely resolving which ante litem statute governs a consolidated city-county government.

We are not going to tell you that a specific number applies here, because the published sources do not establish one. What we will tell you is the only responsible way to handle it: treat six months as the deadline, and serve notice on every plausibly correct recipient — the Transit Authority, the Office of the Mayor and the Macon-Bibb County Commission at 700 Poplar Street — well inside that window. A claimant who does that is protected under any of the possible answers. A claimant who waits for certainty is gambling a case on an unbriefed question.

What the notice needs to contain

Draft it to satisfy the most demanding of the candidate statutes — § 36-33-5. That means stating:

the time of the injury;
the place of the injury;
the extent of the injury, as nearly as practicable;
the negligence which caused the injury; and
the specific amount of monetary damages being sought.

That last item is the most commonly fatal omission in Georgia ante litem practice. The amount functions as an offer of compromise and does not bind you later, but a notice without it is defective.

Serve by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery, return receipt requested, and keep the receipts.

In 2025, in Fleureme v. City of Atlanta, the Georgia Supreme Court held that mailing to the correct office addressed to the “Office of the Mayor” satisfies the delivery requirement, and that substantial compliance with the statute is all that is required. That is meaningful relief on how notice is delivered. It does nothing about the deadline or the content.

What can be recovered

For claims arising from the negligent use of a covered motor vehicle, O.C.G.A. § 36-92-2 waives local government sovereign immunity up to $500,000 for one person’s bodily injury or death in one occurrence, $700,000 in the aggregate for two or more people in one occurrence, and $50,000 for property damage.

Those are floors, not necessarily ceilings. A local government entity can raise them by resolution, through an interlocal risk pool, or by purchasing commercial insurance above the statutory amounts. Whether that has happened is a fact worth establishing early, because it can materially change the value of a serious case.

Evidence on a transit bus case

Buses are, from an evidence standpoint, unusually good — if the demand goes out in time.

Onboard video. Modern transit buses carry multiple interior and exterior cameras. Retention is typically measured in days or weeks, and the footage is overwritten on a schedule that does not pause because someone was hurt.
Automatic vehicle location and telematics data, showing speed, position, and stop sequence.
The driver’s route assignment, hours, and training file.
Maintenance and inspection records, particularly on brakes, doors, and the wheelchair lift.
Incident reports prepared by the Authority itself, which are generated promptly and are separate from the police crash report.

A written preservation demand sent in the first days is frequently the difference between having the video and being told it no longer exists.

Passenger injuries that are not collisions

Not every transit claim is a wreck. A fall while boarding or alighting, a door closing on a passenger, an injury from a sudden and unnecessary stop, a wheelchair securement failure — these are ordinary transit claims, and they run on the same governmental notice rules as a collision.

They are also easier to lose through delay, because people tend not to think of a fall on a bus as a legal matter until weeks have passed.

Where to go from here

If you were hurt on or by a Macon transit bus, the clock you are on is shorter than you think and less certain than it ought to be. Get the notice question answered by someone who will actually look at the enabling act and the current case law, and get it answered inside six months.

Our Macon office is at 544 Mulberry Street, Suite 319, a short distance from Terminal Station. Free consultation, no fee unless we recover for you. (470) 225-7710.

Sessions & Fleischman, LLC — Macon office: 544 Mulberry Street, Suite 319, Macon, GA 31201 | (470) 225-7710
Responsible attorney for the content of this page: Ben Sessions, Georgia Bar No. 141280.

This article is general information about Georgia law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different and past results do not predict future outcomes.

The ante litem rules governing Georgia transit authorities are genuinely unsettled. Do not rely on this article in place of advice about your own claim.

Contingent attorneys’ fees refers only to those fees charged by attorneys for their legal services. Such fees are not permitted in all types of cases. Court costs and other additional expenses of legal action usually must be paid by the client.

About the author: Ben Sessions is a founding partner of Sessions & Fleischman, LLC and tries injury cases from the firm’s Macon office.