Feb 24 2007
Time to make trains safer
<p>How many more people have to die or be injured, before the government does the obvious and brings train safety closer to road safety? I called for action following the tragic crash in my constituency at Ufton Nervet. Still there has been no urgency to learn the lessons.</p>
<p>There should be an immediate requirement that all luggage on a train is secured behind luggage doors or nets, just as it is on an aircraft. Anyone sensible puts heavy luggage in the self contained boot of a car to avoid it injuring??them in a crash. This requirement would not cost that much to implement and is fundamental. Loose luggage on a train can injure people badly.</p>
<p>There should be a requirement that all current express trains should have seat belts fitted, and all new trains of any speed should have seat belts. People can be thrown around??the carriage??when a train derails at high speed, causing injury.</p>
<p>There should be a requirement that all new train carriages should have soft surfaces everywhere where someone might be thrown, just as all modern passenger cars have soft surfaces inside the cabin.</p>
<p>I was horrified by the crash scene at Ufton Nervet which I went to see. The images have stayed with me ever since, of the impact of 350 tonnes of metal leaving the rails at high speed. In that crash some of the windows broke and some people??may have been ??pushed??through the window.</p>
<p>It looks as if there were several??circumstances in this latest tragedy which have mercifully spared many lives.</p>
<p>Firstly, the strong steel structures of the carriages worked, so the carriages stayed intact. One cheer for rail safety.</p>
<p>Secondly, the ground was?? soft with all the rain??so the windows appear to have survived, keeping people in the train?? where the carriages fell on their sides.</p>
<p>Thirdly, the train was not full, limiting the number of people in the most damaged carriages who were at risk.</p>
<p>Legislators insist on limiting road travel to 70 mph, although many production cars are designed to travel safely at speeds much higher than that. Those same legislators often press the railway industry to travel at ever faster speeds, without pausing to consider the position when things go wrong. It only takes one mistake with the points or signals, or one relatively?? minor imperfection on or with the track, to derail a train. A train cannot steer round a faulty points or a block on the track in the way a car or bus can avoid an obstacle.??The very least legislators can do, if they want to carry on with such high speeds, is to give people on the trains more of a chance of escaping without injury by requiring higher safety standards inside the carriages.</p>
<p>Of course we need to know what caused this latest accident. But before we know that we surely can see that it would avoid future injuries and fatalities if we secured the luggage and people on fast trains?
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
How about stop wasting billions on the rail network? If it did not exist could anyone justify building it now? No.
When Ford’s Model-T cars started rolling off the new fangled production lines the rail network became obsolete.
It is time we scapped the intercity railways and replaced them with motorways. Less congestion and the government makes money! Sounds like a great deal to me.
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“How many more people have to die or be injured, before the government does the obvious and brings train safety closer to road safety?”
The first time I have 100% disagreed with you. Trains are MUCH safer than cars. A moving British train is one of the safest places on Earth. The statistics prove this beyond question. The difference is (A) when they happen they tend to kill more people because your average train has more people in it (B) humans are paradoxicly more concerned about risks they don’t control & we are thus much more blase about driving while tired than about our driver being tired (C) partly because train crashes are so rare they make headlines - in the same way if you die of MRSA in hosptial mobody notices but ebola will get you a headline.
About 70 people a week die on the roads. Let us be glad that train safety is not more closely in line with this. You should look behind the headlines here. It has been statisticly proven that increasing train safety in expensive ways costs lives because the increased cost puts people on the roads.
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That’s all very well Kit, but shouldn’t we be trying to reduce journey times? You can’t seriously suggest that any motorway would be safely negotiated at 125mph let alone the 180mph which TGVs achieve?
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Rail is one of the only means of transport that isn’t rendered unbearably tedious by health and safety obsessiveness. While the measures you suggest probably wouldn’t be too annoying, I tend to think it’s the wrong approach. It shouldn’t be too hard to make sure there are no crashes on what is basically a one-dimensional transport system. They should concentrate on maintaining the track and erradicating the possibility of human error (with modern computing methods I think it’s a bit of a failure that there’s a need for drivers at all). I can understand how visiting the site of a crash would be a traumatic experience, but we should remember they’re still very rare and, as you note, it seems in this case the safety measures worked pretty well.
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Why can’t we at last, follow the example of countries like Germany and improve the general efficiency, speed AND safety of trains. Nothing much has improved here in the last one hundred years in terms of any of these things.
Kit, what a ghastly idea. Why cover a beautiful country in concrete?
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Any suggestions that may help improve rail safety at reasonable cost are to be welcomed. However, any article on rail safety should surely start with the fundamental fact that railways are already substantially safer than our roads.
Because rail crashes are, by their nature, rare and spectacular, there is a tendency for them to be sensationalised. This is dangerous because someone that is put off rail travel and chooses to travel by road instead is exposing themselves to greater risk.
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I am a big supporter of the railways, which are statistically far safer than the roads. Your suggestions are very sensible however. In the past, luggage was held in wire cages over the seats, why it isn’t today I have no idea. I’m not sure about the seatbelts however, as fast escape is vital sometimes.
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I am normally a great admirer of John’s writings and analysis. This is why I hope an assistant and not Mr Redwood himself penned this piece.
Following the Ufton Nervet accident the Rail Safety and Standards Board commissioned a study by AEA rail into the usage of belts on trains.
Conclusion, point 1:
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If you above who believe that our trains are safe, then please attend the inquest currently on regarding the Ufton Nervet level crossing tragedy. Although you have already missed the devastating details into why it happened. I lost two family members and all I ask is as the country who inveted trains why can’t we have a yearly MOT which is as highly scrutinized test making sure car safety standards are met by DVLA for train vehicles; as yes they do carry more passengers. They also travel alot faster than cars. Whereas a 5k boat on our canals has a bridge over it, why are we still using old cattle level crossings where trains running at over 100mph are passing!
Reply: I have lobbied the government concerning the need for luggage restraint in carriages, seat belts and replacement of level crossings with bridges and underpasses where possible.
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