What's the difference between a bus and a coach?

The word coach has been around since the 15th century and derives from a town in Hungary called Kocs (pronounced coach in English). this is where a particular type of horse-drawn carriage with the luxury of steel-sprung suspension was first produced and coaches (or carts of Kocs) have been providing transport for the masses between cities and towns around the world ever since. Buses on the other hand tend to be vehicles providing shorter journeys within a local area. The bus as we know it didn't surface until the early 1800s when a French corn-mill owner called Stanislas Baudry wanted to attract customers from the nearby town of Nantes to come and use his hot-water spa. He did this by shuttling them to his property in a horse-drawn carriage, what he had unwittingly invented was a shuttle bus. The word bus is a shortened version of the word omnibus which in Latin means for all.

The functions of buses and coaches have not significantly changed in the centuries since. Coaches usually provide longer distance travel and are synonymous with greater luxury while buses provide transport for shorter hops within a local area.

Physically, buses are much more basic than coaches because customers are not expected to spend long periods on board, another common feature of the bus is one or more wider and more functional entrance doors to facilitate numerous and more frequent stops for passengers to alight or board the vehicle. Modern buses are also fitted with low-floors to facilitate buggies and wheelchairs.

Coaches vary in specification between counties but it is not uncommon for coaches to have reclining seats, seatbelts, forced air ventilation, washrooms and luggage storing facilities above the passenger seats as well as underneath the vehicle in the form of a luggage hold.

Buses and coaches are powered by roughly the same size engines but maximum permitted speeds vary depending on the use of the vehicle with coaches enjoying a top speed limited to 100kph with tachograph recording facilities fitted whereas buses tend to be limited to 90kph or slower and are not required to record speed or distance travelled because their routes and driver rosters are pre-planned.