A bus master for a bus for connection of sensors and/or an ignition means device, which has at least two bus driver arrangements allowing data to be received independently of one another. For this purpose a polling operation, specifically using a multiplexer or a demodulator associated through one of the particular bus driver arrangements, is used. Furthermore, a state machine is provided, which also alternatingly determines the system status on the basis of the measured quantities determined on the bus conductor for the particular bus driver arrangement. In a refinement, a particular bus driver may have a dedicated processor for system status determination.