A method for serial data transmission in a bus system having at least two subscribed data processing units, the data processing units exchanging messages via the bus, the transmitted messages having a logical structure in accordance with the CAN standard ISO 11898-1, the logical structure including a start-of-frame bit, an arbitration field, a control field, a data field, a CRC field, an acknowledge field and an end-of-frame sequence, the control field including a data length code, which contains information regarding the length of the data field. The CRC field of the transmitted messages may have at least two different numbers of bits as a function of the content of the data length code.