Interprovincial bus travel in Peru: cancellations, rebooking, and mandatory passenger insurance

There isn’t one single law — three pieces fit together

Unlike air travel, where a single Andean rule (Decisión 619) covers almost everything, interprovincial bus travel in Peru is protected by three separate legal pieces that have to be read together: the General Law on Land Transport and Traffic (Law 27181) for the vehicle’s mandatory insurance, the Consumer Protection and Defense Code (Law 29571) for your rights as a passenger against the company, and the National Transport Administration Regulation (RENAT) for the obligations and sanctions that apply to the transport company itself.

Mandatory insurance: why an interprovincial bus needs SOAT, not CAT

Every vehicle that circulates in Peru must carry a valid SOAT policy (Seguro Obligatorio de Accidentes de Tránsito) or, failing that, a CAT certificate (Certificado contra Accidentes de Tránsito) issued by an AFOCAT. But they are not interchangeable: Law 27181 itself limits the CAT to “vehículos de transporte provincial de personas, urbano e interurbano […] que sólo tendrán validez dentro de la respectiva circunscripción de funcionamiento” (provincial, urban, and inter-urban passenger transport vehicles […] valid only within their own operating jurisdiction). An interprovincial bus — one that crosses from one province or region to another — falls outside that scope, so it needs SOAT, not CAT.

Both cover “a todas las personas, sean ocupantes o terceros no ocupantes que sufran lesiones o muerte, como producto de un accidente de tránsito” (Art. 30.2) — every person, occupant or third party, who suffers injury or death in a traffic accident — without looking at who was at fault. For the exact SOAT coverage amounts in soles (death, permanent disability, medical expenses, burial costs), see our dedicated SOAT page — we mark it partial because those peso figures come from press and insurer sources, not from our own direct reading of the decree.

If there was an accident and the bus had no valid SOAT

This isn’t just a minor administrative infraction. The National Transport Administration Regulation treats an accident, robbery, or incident with no valid SOAT (or other required insurance) as a violation with no grace period to fix: the transport authority immediately opens a sanctioning procedure against the company, without the days normally allowed to correct a violation. In practice, this means a company that lets a unit circulate without SOAT is risking far more than an isolated fine if that unit ends up in an accident.

On the victim’s side, see SOAT, CAT or Compensation Fund: who pays, which explains what the Compensation Fund covers and when it does not pay.

Canceling or rescheduling your trip: the right most people don’t know about

Article 66.7 of Law 29571 gives you a concrete, little-known right: you can transfer your ticket to another fully identified person, or postpone the trip, on the same terms you agreed to, by notifying the company in advance and in a verifiable way with no less than 24 hours’ notice before the scheduled travel date and time. The only cost you can be made to cover is the actual cost of issuing the new ticket — not a penalty, not a percentage of the fare, not an inflated “administrative” fee.

The same rule solves a common problem with round-trip or multi-leg tickets: if you didn’t use one of the legs, you still have the right to use the remaining ones. The company can’t cancel your return ticket just because you missed the outbound bus, unless there’s already another reservation or another person’s ticket for that same route and those same dates.

Which ticket clauses are void, even if they’re printed

Not everything printed on the back of your ticket is valid. Law 29571 defines an abusive clause as “toda estipulación no negociada individualmente que, en contra de las exigencias de la buena fe, coloque al consumidor […] en una situación de desventaja” (Art. 49.1) — any non-individually-negotiated term that, against the requirements of good faith, puts the consumer at a disadvantage — and it voids as a matter of law any clause “que excluyan o limiten los derechos legales reconocidos a los consumidores” (Art. 50, literal e) — that excludes or limits legal rights already recognized to consumers. A printed condition that says, for example, “only reschedulable up to X months after purchase” or “you lose the ticket if you give less than 5 days’ notice” — in other words, any restriction stricter than the 24 hours the law requires — falls directly into that category and doesn’t bind you, even if you signed or accepted it at purchase. A legal write-up that covered the case points to at least one Indecopi precedent sanctioning a transport company for including exactly that kind of clause in its tickets; we could not confirm the text of that resolution on an official portal, so we mention it as a reference, not as a citation we verified ourselves.

What to do, in order

The concrete steps — before you travel, if you need to change the date, if there’s an accident, and if the company doesn’t respond — are above, with links to the Complaints Book and how to file a complaint with Indecopi.