Is the UK 'overdue' a serious rail accident?

[philthetube]

Is it possible with modern signalling for two trains to have a head-on collision in the UK anymore? How might this occur if it did?

Chiltern and a Met were only a few metres away recently...

Worth pointing out that this was not in a modern signalling area, though this is irrelevant to the op's point.

 

[MarkyT]

Worth pointing out that this was not in a modern signalling area, though this is irrelevant to the op's point.

Although it WAS in an area equipped with a simple, normally very reliable, and highly effective train protection system in the form of the mechanical trainstop that has successfully protected many many millions of LUL passengers for over a century.

 

[bramling]

Worth pointing out that this was not in a modern signalling area, though this is irrelevant to the op's point.

In this case it seems likely procedures will be more relevant in the investigation than the performance of the signalling system. Indeed the signalling at Chalfont seems to have worked exactly as designed, it was what happened after which is of relevance.

 

[Jozhua]

I mean maybe, but I feel much safer on the railways than the roads. Even if there was a Clapham Junction every year, it wouldn't touch the amount of deaths from people on the roads. Unfortunately, the general public does not see it that way, especially as rail accidents get so much news coverage.

That said, I'd say my main concern these days is some dicy infrastructure, I was on a train when the OLE blew up at Manchester Oxford Road, sending sparks and bits of burning debris across the busy platform. Some of it only barely missed paasengers.

Actually Castlefield is probably a disaster waiting to happen in regards to platform overcrowding wouldn't be suprised if someone falls in, although post corona who knows...

Still, the railways are in much better shape than the roads and Network Rail has been doing fairly well trying to bring it up to scratch, even on a peacemeal budget.

 

[mike57]

Surely accidents fall into two main categories:

Those caused by actions taken by someone within control of the rail industry, e.g signal passed at danger, infrastructure failure due to poor maintenance etc.

Those caused by events outside rail industry control, that realistically cannot be foreseen e.g. Great Heck.

The first group can be driven down to near zero by a strong safety culture, the second group of accidents will always happen, and all the rail industry can do is mitigate the consequences, e.g. crash worthiness.

This being the case its reasonable to assume at some point there will be another major accident, but to follow up post #63 rail travel is safer than road travel. Over my working career (47 years) I can think of 3 work colleagues who lost their lives in road accidents, but no rail fatalities, and I suspect my experience is typical.

 

[edwin_m]

I’m not in the industry though so I’m just curious about what rail staff and people that understand these things think about how successful TPWS has been vs the cost of installing it etc?

I posted on TPWS a few posts above yours.

Worth pointing out that this was not in a modern signalling area, though this is irrelevant to the op's point.

Although it WAS in an area equipped with a simple, normally very reliable, and highly effective train protection system in the form of the mechanical trainstop that has successfully protected many many millions of LUL passengers for over a century.

However it's a system with a track record of "reset and continue" accidents, of which this appears to be just the latest one. Probably unavoidable with the technology of the time but a modern system such as TPWS includes extra safeguards as well as better reliability by eliminating moving parts. Yet LUL plans to retain this system for use by Chiltern when the signaling through Chalfont is replaced...

 

[TheEdge]

Just my 2 cents, look at the impeccable safety record of shinkansen. In it's 50plus years of running and NO crashes/fatalities. We in the UK are miles behind when it comes to safety, but it's improving.

I would argue that isn't fair. Have a look at recent history on the continent and we are far ahead of most of the networks that often are lauded as so much better than us. Bad Aibling for example would probably have been impossible in the UK.

I’m not in the industry though so I’m just curious about what rail staff and people that understand these things think about how successful TPWS has been vs the cost of installing it etc?

TPWS is a smart solution where it exists and where it catches something, it's massively reduced the risks at conflict points where its fitted. But it isn't universal. Its rarely fitted on plain line so it wont stop someone flying past an automatic signal displaying red and smashing into the back of a train stopped in a station. TPWS overspeed has the same issues, if a train passes over the loops doing 1mph above the trigger speed, lovely, incident avoided, if it passes over at 1mph under and isn't braking you still get an incident. Something like ATP may have stopped that.

As a whole I think there is a growing risk of a serious incident. Not necessarily due to complacency as such but more due to the fact with Greyrigg 13 years ago being the last fatal crash caused by the railway (in laymans terms) a growing number of us as operational staff have never worked on a railway dealing with those so that knowledge and experience is starting to fade.

 

[Railman]

When you have an industry where safety in No1 but nothing ever goes wrong (major incidents) then over time complacancy WILL come in. Clapham, Ladbrook Grove etc, wil not mean anything to staff with less than 20 years service, which is an awful lot of staff. That also means most managers and trainers have never had first hand experience of the "shock" that occurs when the "will never happen" happens. lots of things happen, but are not reported because the industry is NOT set up to encourage/deal with these things. The system prefers not to know because its a problem, also will any manager stand up and say "yes i've investigatged and the matter is closed" without watching his/her back in case another manager reports them.

 

[MarkyT]

However it's a system with a track record of "reset and continue" accidents, of which this appears to be just the latest one. Probably unavoidable with the technology of the time but a modern system such as TPWS includes extra safeguards as well as better reliability by eliminating moving parts. Yet LUL plans to retain this system for use by Chiltern when the signaling through Chalfont is replaced...

It would be better to fit TPWS instead but I'd prefer ETCS L1 LS (limited supervision) using active eurobalises to directly replace the train stops at each signal driven by exactly the same system outputs currently intended to activate the train stops. This would be especially attractive as part of an ETCS overlay scheme to replace the Chiltern SelCab ATP which must be removed in the near future due to system obsolescence. Such an overlay could mostly be based on L1 techniques with active switched balises using the same distributed lineside interfaces as the ATP but also apply L2 techniques selectively for radio update of 'better aspect' movement authority where justified for perfprmance. On the LUL infrastructure, either TPWS or ETCS would require additional centre conductor rail breaks to accommodate the track transponders.

 

[MarkyT]

I would argue that isn't fair. Have a look at recent history on the continent and we are far ahead of most of the networks that often are lauded as so much better than us. Bad Aibling for example would probably have been impossible in the UK.



TPWS is a smart solution where it exists and where it catches something, it's massively reduced the risks at conflict points where its fitted. But it isn't universal. Its rarely fitted on plain line so it wont stop someone flying past an automatic signal displaying red and smashing into the back of a train stopped in a station. TPWS overspeed has the same issues, if a train passes over the loops doing 1mph above the trigger speed, lovely, incident avoided, if it passes over at 1mph under and isn't braking you still get an incident. Something like ATP may have stopped that.

Because it can retain state memory and has access to full ATP style functionality onboard, it is plausible that more modern 'native ETCS' rolling stock emulating TPWS/AWS behaviour via its EVC using STM techniques could apply additional extended safeguards, to prevent reacceleration for a certain distance or time after successfully passing an overspeed trap for example. Where traffic stats were high enough and there was a mixed stopping pattern in normal service, certain plain line signals protecting station stops WERE fitted with TPWS as they exceeded the risk score threshold. Where the vast majority of services stopped though this didn't usually apply, which does leave an outlier risk involving the small number of trains that run non stop on slow lines, such as freights, and of course diverted fasts during engineering works.

 

[O L Leigh]

I’m afraid that I don’t believe in luck, and writing-off the professionalism of countless thousands of rail workers who do the right things and ensure a good standard of safety due to following the correct procedures at the right time as mere “luck” smacks a little bit of disrespect.

Certainly technology has helped. TPWS, better signalling standards and improved communication through GSM-R have all played a big part in helping us make the railways safer. And when these technologies fail we have procedures to help keep things moving, which also help to ensure safety.

I don’t want to think that we’re “overdue” a big incident, but I can see that it’s not impossible to have one. For me the weak link is communication, as has been shown by recent trends in rail accidents. I don’t feel it’s so bad between drivers and signallers as I think we’re pretty good at monitoring each other’s standards and aren’t afraid to ask for clarification if needed, but there do seem to be issues where groups regularly work together and lapse into less formal forms of safety-critical communication. And then we have the public who regularly drive through level crossing barriers.

 

[MarkyT]

I would argue that isn't fair. Have a look at recent history on the continent and we are far ahead of most of the networks that often are lauded as so much better than us. Bad Aibling for example would probably have been impossible in the UK.

German PZB (Indusi) is an excellent system, very similar in headline functionality to our combination of AWS and TPWS. It has extended safeguards built in such as an enforced slowdown instead of just an acknowledgement after a distant warning, and acceleration prevented for a measured distance after a speed trap. It wasn't fitted very widely on rural single lines until relatively recently however. Bad Aibling was fully PZB equipped, but it was the underlying issue with the single line block system having such a poorly controlled override that was the problem.

 

[Bikeman78]

During the BR era and into privatisation the UK had rail major accidents pretty frequently - a quick look on Wikipedia shows that accidents with multiple fatalities occurred almost one per year through the 1950s and then decreased to every few years through the 60s and 70s, with just 6 in the 20 years between 1984 and 2004 (including Ufton Nervet, the cause of which was outside the control of the railway). Most of those accidents, and most transport-related accidents for that matter, have either engineering or human factors at the root: e.g. an undetected failure in a part, or a human makes a mistake like misreading signals.

In the near 13 years since Greyrigg the deaths which have occurred on the railway have been of the 'death by misadventure' type rather than accidents/crashes, so my questions are:

• Is the decade-plus since the Greyrigg accident just the continuation of the trend of increasing safety and longer period between accidents due to the industry designing risk out of the system, or have we just been lucky?
• Normally, after an accident, there's a heightened consciousness of risk, but over time people become complacent. For those in the industry, have you seen examples of complacency slipping in? It seems that there have been a few 'near misses' of late, but is that just increased reporting?
• How do you avoid the normalisation of risk and remain sharp?

There were more than six between 1984 and 2004.
Clapham Junction
Purley
Bellgrove
Cannon Street
Newton
Cowden
Southall
Ladbroke Grove
Hatfield
Potters Bar

 

[najaB]

There were more than six between 1984 and 2004.
Clapham Junction
Purley
Bellgrove
Cannon Street
Newton
Cowden
Southall
Ladbroke Grove
Hatfield
Potters Bar

I (arbitrarily) only counted accidents with more than three fatalities and 25 injuries as 'major'.

 

[PupCuff]

When you have an industry where safety in No1 but nothing ever goes wrong (major incidents) then over time complacancy WILL come in. Clapham, Ladbrook Grove etc, wil not mean anything to staff with less than 20 years service, which is an awful lot of staff. That also means most managers and trainers have never had first hand experience of the "shock" that occurs when the "will never happen" happens. lots of things happen, but are not reported because the industry is NOT set up to encourage/deal with these things. The system prefers not to know because its a problem, also will any manager stand up and say "yes i've investigatged and the matter is closed" without watching his/her back in case another manager reports them.

I don't tend to encourage comparisons between the rail industry and the aviation industry, but aviation's safety culture is significantly better than the rail industry's and a lot could be learned. A good safety culture would promote having active conversations about safety, reporting safety issues consistently and accurately without fear of recrimination, effective and proportionate investigation of those incidents with feedback given to the reporting employee, and action taken to control future risk. Additionally to that there needs to be effective recording of safety incidents, effective data analysis to identify trends, and a management willing to then act on those trends and put controls in place.

Of course, there's so many areas where those chains can fail. If an incident is reported but not then properly investigated because the manager doesn't fully understand the issue there is no safety benefit from the process. If an incident doesn't get reported then it isn't going to be properly investigated. And if there's nobody with a finger on the pulse on the trends then the interventions won't happen and the problems will continue unchecked. If just one link in the chain of that process fails it can become irreparably damaged.

 

[bramling]

I’m afraid that I don’t believe in luck, and writing-off the professionalism of countless thousands of rail workers who do the right things and ensure a good standard of safety due to following the correct procedures at the right time as mere “luck” smacks a little bit of disrespect.

Certainly technology has helped. TPWS, better signalling standards and improved communication through GSM-R have all played a big part in helping us make the railways safer. And when these technologies fail we have procedures to help keep things moving, which also help to ensure safety.

I don’t want to think that we’re “overdue” a big incident, but I can see that it’s not impossible to have one. For me the weak link is communication, as has been shown by recent trends in rail accidents. I don’t feel it’s so bad between drivers and signallers as I think we’re pretty good at monitoring each other’s standards and aren’t afraid to ask for clarification if needed, but there do seem to be issues where groups regularly work together and lapse into less formal forms of safety-critical communication. And then we have the public who regularly drive through level crossing barriers.

Whilst I agree with the premise of your post, I think history shows there has been an element of luck. There’s been some close shaves over the period in question, Watford Tunnel in particular could so easily have gone the other way had things been just slightly different.

Heck is the ultimate example of where fortune really wasn’t on the railway’s side. The fact that the car came off the road into the railway in the first place was bad luck, but then massively aggravated by landing in such a way that the train derailed (perhaps it might not have done if a heavy loco was leading, who knows?), a set of points oriented in such a way to deflect the train to the right, and finally a freight train coming the other way at precisely the wrong place and time.

For something more mundane the Peckham detrainment was also one where they got really lucky. That could so easily have led to fatalities.

I think that no matter how good the safety culture is there will always be some element of luck, however I completely agree that the safety focus has greatly heavily reduced this, but it can never be completely eliminated.

The big challenge is complacency and corporate memory forgetting why we do certain things in particular ways which may seem needlessly complicated or archaic.

 

[james60059]

Those caused by events outside rail industry control, that realistically cannot be foreseen e.g. Great Heck.

I can't find a link online, but I always remember one of the daily rags were atrocious, a massive headline read "Freight Train was 40 (something) Early" as in to imply it was the freight train's fault for the seriousness of the accident ,(had it been on time, it may not have hit the wreckage) it may have been The Sun but can't remember 100%.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Several posters have referred to Network Rail 'maintenance cuts', 'reductions in inspections', etc. potentially increasing risk.

Glancing back at past ORR Periodic Review Determinations it is far from clear to me that this sort of bread-and-butter activity is being under-funded (ever since Hatfield, around 20 years ago now).

For example, the Control Period 4 determination in 2008 (in the depths of the Financial Crisis) allowed £5.018 billion for Maintenance and £10.760 billion for renewals at 2006-7 prices. Applying a basic Bank of England inflation adjustment increases these figures to £6.837 billion for Maintenance and £14.665 billion for Renewals at 2017-18 prices.

The Control Period 6 determinations (for England & Wales, plus Scotland added on) were £7.692 billion for Maintenance and £16.642 billion for Renewals at 2017-18 prices. (These figures despite what have often been described as unrealistic efficiency assumptions.)

So can anybody point to where the engineering 'cuts' are actually happening? Are depots being closed, experienced staff being offered redundancy and so forth? Since retirement I no longer have direct exposure to these matters.

 

[Ianno87]

I can't find a link online, but I always remember one of the daily rags were atrocious, a massive headline read "Freight Train was 40 (something) Early" as in to imply it was the freight train's fault for the seriousness of the accident ,(had it been on time, it may not have hit the wreckage) it may have been The Sun but can't remember 100%.

**But** early running trains do have a safety consequence, in being (in theory) more likely to end up approaching a Red signal, or approaching a track patrol that may not be expecting it (for example)

(Though I agree implying early runnimg was somehow a cause of the severity of the Heck accident is disingenuous at best)

 

[edwin_m]

So can anybody point to where the engineering 'cuts' are actually happening? Are depots being closed, experienced staff being offered redundancy and so forth? Since retirement I no longer have direct exposure to these matters.

I don't have time right now to dig into the detail, but many recent RAIB reports have mentioned people acting in or covering for roles, multiple layers of sub-contracting in safety roles, and other symptoms of there being insufficient resource in place to do the work (including the paperwork) that needs to be done. This is particularly evident in relation to infrastructure maintenance.

 

[bramling]

**But** early running trains do have a safety consequence, in being (in theory) more likely to end up approaching a Red signal, or approaching a track patrol that may not be expecting it (for example)

(Though I agree implying early runnimg was somehow a cause of the severity of the Heck accident is disingenuous at best)

Generally speaking rule number one of protection should always be *never* use the timetable as a means of staying safe.

Whilst there’s no doubt no p-way in the world that’s never done “there won’t be a train for a few minutes, this is our moment”, anyone who knows what they’re doing will still treat things as if a train *could* appear at any moment even if they’re sure in reality it won’t. Much of railway safety is based on belt & braces, so if one layer of safety fails for whatever reason another layer should still save you from harm.

This latter point is what some managements don’t realise. In reality people *do* circumvent procedures or parts of procedures, either deliberately or accidentally. The more layers are there the more chance there is of the protective barrier breaking down completely, and it’s those things which may seem pointless (e.g. taking a driver’s key even when he’s told you he’s not going to move) that one day could save your life or someone else’s.

The saying that the Rule Book is written in blood is very true. It’s also true that the Rule Book does need to keep pace with changing technology, this is one area of risk when processes genuinely don’t fit how things are nowadays done leading people to lose confidence in them and do their own thing.

 

[O L Leigh]

Whilst I agree with the premise of your post, I think history shows there has been an element of luck. There’s been some close shaves over the period in question, Watford Tunnel in particular could so easily have gone the other way had things been just slightly different.

Heck is the ultimate example of where fortune really wasn’t on the railway’s side. The fact that the car came off the road into the railway in the first place was bad luck, but then massively aggravated by landing in such a way that the train derailed (perhaps it might not have done if a heavy loco was leading, who knows?), a set of points oriented in such a way to deflect the train to the right, and finally a freight train coming the other way at precisely the wrong place and time.

For something more mundane the Peckham detrainment was also one where they got really lucky. That could so easily have led to fatalities.

I think that no matter how good the safety culture is there will always be some element of luck, however I completely agree that the safety focus has greatly heavily reduced this, but it can never be completely eliminated.

The big challenge is complacency and corporate memory forgetting why we do certain things in particular ways which may seem needlessly complicated or archaic.

I'm not really wishing for this thread to become a discussion on the nature and psychology of luck, but I'm afraid that I am not swayed. In a lot of senses I would prefer to call them circumstances.

In some of the instances that you've referred to luck had absolutely no part to play. It was not bad luck that a road vehicle ended up on the track at Great Heck but because the line at that location was not adequately protected against a vehicle leaving the M62 at that location making an incursion onto the line*. Likewise at Peckham (if I have the right detrainment in mind) no harm came to the passengers because someone had the presence of mind to get the power supply to the juice rail isolated.

The problem is that human nature is so prone to looking at a situation and attributing luck, whether good or bad, to the outcome. It's tempting to think "Phew!! That was lucky" after you've climbed unhurt from your car after losing control on a patch of ice, rolling it and ending up upside down in a ditch. And in a lot of respects, yes, it could have been so much worse. But was that really good luck? Was that really the best of all possible outcomes? I'd say that it's not when you could just as easily ended up spinning 360 degrees, nudging the opposite verge and being able to continue unharmed with no damage to your car whatsoever. In a situation like that, as with the Desiro derailing inside a tunnel, there's simply no way to know if the outcome you experienced was the best of all possible outcomes or not and, therefore, whether or not "luck" had anything to do with it.

(* On the Great Heck crash point, I know that the courts ruled after the event that there was no problem with the length of the crash barriers on the M62 overbridge, but I understand that the reasons for bringing these actions were that Gary Hart and his insurer were trying to prove contributory negligence on the part of the DfT. However, I happen to agree that had the crash barriers been longer they would have prevented the accident by containing Hart's vehicle within the M62 carriageway. Alternatively, a better fence than the simple wooden affair that was there should have prevented incursion onto the railway.

Either way, there were definite attributable causes for the Great Heck crash that had nothing to do with simple bad luck, even if you disagree that the protection against vehicle incursion from the M62 line at Great Heck was a contributory factor. Hart spent the previous night chatting to his new squeeze, was over-tired and fell asleep at the wheel causing his vehicle to leave the road.)

 

[py_megapixel]

I don't know who's told you this but it's not true.

It's not fitted at common (multi) spad signals.

It's fitted where there is a risk of train v train. It's based on the route risk assessment.

If you have miles of track with no likelihood of a conflicting movement (known as plain line in some areas) then what's the point?

The risk of collision is you going into the back of a train, in which case you've missed the signal, and then the tail lights of said train.

OK thanks for correcting me

 

[bramling]

I'm not really wishing for this thread to become a discussion on the nature and psychology of luck, but I'm afraid that I am not swayed. In a lot of senses I would prefer to call them circumstances.

In some of the instances that you've referred to luck had absolutely no part to play. It was not bad luck that a road vehicle ended up on the track at Great Heck but because the line at that location was not adequately protected against a vehicle leaving the M62 at that location making an incursion onto the line*. Likewise at Peckham (if I have the right detrainment in mind) no harm came to the passengers because someone had the presence of mind to get the power supply to the juice rail isolated.

The problem is that human nature is so prone to looking at a situation and attributing luck, whether good or bad, to the outcome. It's tempting to think "Phew!! That was lucky" after you've climbed unhurt from your car after losing control on a patch of ice, rolling it and ending up upside down in a ditch. And in a lot of respects, yes, it could have been so much worse. But was that really good luck? Was that really the best of all possible outcomes? I'd say that it's not when you could just as easily ended up spinning 360 degrees, nudging the opposite verge and being able to continue unharmed with no damage to your car whatsoever. In a situation like that, as with the Desiro derailing inside a tunnel, there's simply no way to know if the outcome you experienced was the best of all possible outcomes or not and, therefore, whether or not "luck" had anything to do with it.

(* On the Great Heck crash point, I know that the courts ruled after the event that there was no problem with the length of the crash barriers on the M62 overbridge, but I understand that the reasons for bringing these actions were that Gary Hart and his insurer were trying to prove contributory negligence on the part of the DfT. However, I happen to agree that had the crash barriers been longer they would have prevented the accident by containing Hart's vehicle within the M62 carriageway. Alternatively, a better fence than the simple wooden affair that was there should have prevented incursion onto the railway. Either way, there were definite attributable causes for the Great Heck crash that had nothing to do with simple bad luck.)

I see your points and agree that the motorway at Heck should probably have been better protected. However take another incident, the North Rode accident where a 323 hit a car which had rolled away from a car park, and derailed at 90 mph. Fortunately it derailed to the left, as there was another train travelling in the other direction at 105 mph, which would almost certainly have given us a collision with worse severity than either Great Heck or Ladbroke Grove. The 323 also dodged a brick overbridge too which was very fortunate having derailed to the left. Once that 323 was off the rails it really was down to fortune what happened next, or in this case thankfully didn’t. Likewise I seem to remember it was the case at Southall that a fragment of metal breaking off a wagon also had consequences for how the accident panned out.

Perhaps it’s not so much the case that luck prevents an incident from happening, but there’s certainly luck involved in determining the severity of consequences. Indeed there’s been accidents where fatality / injury numbers have been reduced simply by factors like first class being at the front (I seem to remember the Ufton HST was in reverse formation?).

In the case of Peckham the detrainment was over live 3rd rail, it was only the presence of a particular member of staff who realised what was going on and took actions, by which time some people had been exposed to risk. We could quite easily there have seen someone step on a 3rd rail. Yes the situation shouldn’t have arisen in the first place, however as we seem to be measuring safety success based on injuries and fatalities then this incident, now largely forgotten, could certainly have been in the history books for the wrong reasons.

If we were to be judging success by number of incidents which have occurred then things aren’t quite as rosy as they appear - the driver of that 323 I mentioned above certainly had a close shave that night. Sooner or later it’s inevitable one of these near misses will go the wrong way. No doubt it’s why the industry has a good culture for reporting and investigating near misses.

I don’t think the industry should necessarily pat itself on the back and say everything is wonderful and “haven’t we all done well?”. History might be very different had that AWS not failed for Southall and a different driver been allocated to the Ladbroke Grove train on those fateful days, whilst meanwhile some of the near misses we’ve seen in the last two decades could easily have been disasters.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I don't have time right now to dig into the detail, but many recent RAIB reports have mentioned people acting in or covering for roles, multiple layers of sub-contracting in safety roles, and other symptoms of there being insufficient resource in place to do the work (including the paperwork) that needs to be done. This is particularly evident in relation to infrastructure maintenance.

Thanks. I completely agree that recent RAIB reports have exposed some pretty flaky local circumstances that may well be indicative of things like poor local management, re-organisations, individual indiscipline and so forth. What is less obvious that this is necessarily a symptom of 'under-funding' or 'cuts'.

 

[Horizon22]

I don't tend to encourage comparisons between the rail industry and the aviation industry, but aviation's safety culture is significantly better than the rail industry's and a lot could be learned. A good safety culture would promote having active conversations about safety, reporting safety issues consistently and accurately without fear of recrimination, effective and proportionate investigation of those incidents with feedback given to the reporting employee, and action taken to control future risk.

Lots of aspects of the "good safety culture" you mention are very much in place in the rail industry.

 

[Horizon22]

Likewise at Peckham (if I have the right detrainment in mind) no harm came to the passengers because someone had the presence of mind to get the power supply to the juice rail isolated.

Yes eventually, but not before a considerable amount of passengers had left the train & time had passed. Those responsible (firstly the driver and platform staff) did not note this and a manager who was "luckily" at the station was made aware.

 

[edwin_m]

Lots of aspects of the "good safety culture" you mention are very much in place in the rail industry.

Based on reading most of the AAIB as well as RAIB reports I agree with the previous poster that it's considerably less consistent in rail, but it's probably patchy so you personal experience may differ. If it's any consolation, I read the MAIB reports too and safety culture seems to be pretty non-existent in some parts of the shipping industry.

 

[Horizon22]

Based on reading most of the AAIB as well as RAIB reports I agree with the previous poster that it's considerably less consistent in rail, but it's probably patchy so you personal experience may differ. If it's any consolation, I read the MAIB reports too and safety culture seems to be pretty non-existent in some parts of the shipping industry.

I've of course got no experience in air but RAIB (and in fact any investigations) obviously investigate where safety processes have gone wrong to some degree, so there will be likely be fairly bad practices noted. The key point is whether its a) endemic and b) whether a larger amount of near-misses are going unnoticed.

 

[edwin_m]

I've of course got no experience in air but RAIB (and in fact any investigations) obviously investigate where safety processes have gone wrong to some degree, so there will be likely be fairly bad practices noted. The key point is whether its a) endemic and b) whether a larger amount of near-misses are going unnoticed.

They do make "observations" which are bad practices noted in passing but not directly causal to the accident. Safety-critical communications is one area where air beats rail hands down, see also Roger Ford on the subject.