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New Rail Safety Campaign

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PaxVobiscum

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18002037

Report featuring scary footage and an interview with a driver.

A new campaign has been launched to highlight the dangers of walking across railway tracks, which claims about 50 lives a year in the UK.

CCTV footage has been released which shows several cases of people having a dangerous brush with oncoming trains.
 
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PFX

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I reckon they should make something a bit more hard-hitting. The unfortunate thing is these idiots aren't going to stop, regardless of what sort of safety campaign is used.
 

michael769

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I reckon they should make something a bit more hard-hitting. The unfortunate thing is these idiots aren't going to stop, regardless of what sort of safety campaign is used.

Indeed people do this because they convince themselves they can get clear in time. You can show someone like that as many films to trains hitting people as you want, but they will still believe that it will not happen to them.
 

DownSouth

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Got to love the drivers mathematical skills, or lack thereof. If he's running his train at 720 km/h (447 mph) like he claims then somebody should investigate him for breaking both the speed limits and the laws of physics!

I'm not sure the campaign will work. The CCTV clips make it look quite amateurish, while the ad with the athlete misses the point and makes it look like an advertising agency made it primarily to look good in their portfolio. Does anybody have a link to the full adverts rather than just the snippets shown on the BBC clip?

Campaigns like this can work, they just need to be done well, and always entrusted to an advertising agency experienced in public service announcements.

A massive campaign here in South Australia that involved all forms of media a few years ago won international awards for effective advertising where the results must be shown. Most significant is that it was good enough for private freight operators to allow their liveries to be seen in it, something usually taboo. The centrepiece of the campaign was a pair of TV commercials which mostly aired during family shows and sport. This is rail safety advertising done right...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxm2A-sdTLk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWITbOwXEYg


It can also be done incredibly badly. Across the border to the east of South Australia, the Victorian state government tried to copy our campaign and ended up with this steaming pile which suffers complete failure at only 3 seconds in when the actor insults the viewer's intelligence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G59LUeJ_tCk
 

HSTEd

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"Now lets electrify one of the rails, trouble is, guy doesn't know which one".....


So he's an idiot and can't see the enormous insulators or totally different shape and put 2 and 2 together?
 

jon0844

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I reckon they should make something a bit more hard-hitting. The unfortunate thing is these idiots aren't going to stop, regardless of what sort of safety campaign is used.

True. The video almost makes out that you can be that stupid and still get away with it.
 

JGR

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The sort of imbeciles who would wander all over the tracks are likely to also be the sort of fools who pay little heed to public safety announcements.

As much as this sort of thing is a good idea, I can't see it having that much of an impact.
You can't fix idiocy with an advert.
 

fairysdad

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There are more examples in our favourite newspaper: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2141711/Rail-idiots-The-people-diced-death-taking-shortcut-train-tracks-survived--50-year-lucky.html

It must be an ongoing problem at Leeds as they have signs on the platform edges about not crossing the line.
And of course, typical for the Daily Mail, the top comment shown is about the quality of the CCTV footage, and that with rail fares being as they are we should have HD CCTV by now... :roll:
 

PFX

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Got to love the drivers mathematical skills, or lack thereof. If he's running his train at 720 km/h (447 mph) like he claims then somebody should investigate him for breaking both the speed limits and the laws of physics![/url]

I would rather the driver got his maths wrong and kept the majority of his attention on the slightly more important task at hand.

It is probably likely he meant 200 f/s which is a more realistic 136 mph and while still not exactly correct, rolls off the tongue better than 183 f/s. The vagaries aside, whether you're hit at 200 m/s or 200 ft/s, it's still going to be a mess.
 

Mattmatt

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Network Rail has also teamed up with 400m hurdles champion Dai Greene to warn people about the dangers of taking a shortcut across the tracks.

A jogger dices with death as he runs alongside a track in Grangetown, Cardiff


article-2141711-13003885000005DC-188_636x394.jpg

But the journo, who did the story, couldn't of have had a clue, as it states

And to illustrate the point, Network Rail has posted pictures of various people with a deathwish - such as a male jogger, in red top and black shorts, seen running alongside a track in Grangetown, Cardiff.

Just one stumble onto a live rail and he probably wouldn't be doing any running (or anything else) again.

Not quite 3rd rail, or OLE. I'm sure they're doing their best to get the point across.

Although I think that Network Rail needs to be a forced to publicise the issues with trespass on the railway like the Government does with Cigarette packets and smoking. With photo's of lost limbs and disfigurement, it might get the message across then!
 

ex-railwayman

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This issue has been tossed around for decades, we said many years ago, the only way to get the message across is to go and interview, and watch, the fitters washing the blood and guts from underneath a tube train standing over a pit, but, of course that's far too gory to be shown by our squeaky clean Secretary of State for Transport, so, these very tepid demonstrations are all you're likely to see being advertised nationally by Network Rail, et al, and will it get the message across, not a chuffin' chance.

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.
 
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michael769

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Doesn't matter what you do. They still will not accept that it could happen to them!
 

jon0844

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I can pretty much see why people think there's no point educating these idiots, and letting evolution work its magic.

But, then you think of the poor driver.

Still, idiots will be idiots so the only real solution is proper counselling for the driver - explaining that there was nothing they could do. I doubt you'll ever stop these people taking risks.
 

142094

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In the space of about two weeks I'd seen 3 people tresspass on a line up here, two who were obviously drunk, and the other I knew was p***ed as a fart as he started talking to me, bottle of Frosty Jack in hand. So the common denominator is alcohol. I wouldn't be surprised if the ones that happen at Leeds also involve drunks, due to the two bars on the station and the ones very nearby.

Can't really see the new adverts having that much of an impact, the source of the problem runs much deeper.
 

Peter Mugridge

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I agree the Australian adverts are far better than the ones we do here in the UK.

I also agree that the idiots will still pay no attention and will just carry on trespassing.
 

LE Greys

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article-2141711-1300423D000005DC-590_636x461.jpg

Looks to me like the Track is disused also the DM berates the jogger but not the cameraman that is also standing on the track

I'm not sure, the ballast seems to be in good nick. I seem to remember a story about how Iris was out doing a check on what I think was the Radstock branch, and encountered an old lady towing one of those trolley things down the four-foot of the 'disused' line. Luckily, they were going so slowly that they were able to stop and give her a lift. I fell for something similar at Folkestone Harbour, exploring the 'disused' station and suddenly realising that it was very clearly active, because there was still live signalling. I removed myself before anybody noticed. Good thing it hadn't been a few years ago with the power still on.
 

Hydro

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I believe that's the Sizewell branch. Could be more dangerous, as people will be fooled into thinking it's disused and of course, there's no public timetable for freight or test trains so they'll just assume nothing ever goes up there.

The TRU nearly bowled over a dog walker on a lightly used freight line in Scotland a while ago. People just assume there's going to be no trains. Don't ever just think "Oh, that track looks disused" because it's got a bit of rust on it.
 

fairysdad

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Looks to me like the Track is disused also the DM berates the jogger but not the cameraman that is also standing on the track
Of course, both the 'jogger' (who looks like he's walking btw) and the photographer can probably be excused given that, with the watermark '© Network Rail' and that it's not CCTV, one can deduce that it's probably a promotional shot for the campaign ;)
 

PFX

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People just assume there's going to be no trains. Don't ever just think "Oh, that track looks disused" because it's got a bit of rust on it.

True, it takes only a matter of hours for rust to start showing.
 

CC 72100

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I agree the Australian adverts are far better than the ones we do here in the UK.

I also agree that the idiots will still pay no attention and will just carry on trespassing.

I remember for a road safety presentation by a local charity at secondary school when I was in about year 10 and later on at sixth form, Australian road safety adverts were used, and they were far more shocking and had far stronger an impact than their Uk counterparts.
 

DownSouth

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That's because we have roads that make inattention deadly. The shortest journey that covers the ground between two of our state capital cities is Adelaide to/from Melbourne, 728 km (452 mi) of which 504 km (313 mi) is on single carriageway with trees on either side in many locations and shared with B-Doubles. I've seen some pretty stupid driving from all angles (as a cyclist, driver and public transport user) but I have to say the first time I drove on the Dukes Highway towards Melbourne was the scariest driving experience by far, and I was exhausted before our morning tea stop because that much concentration is needed.

The trick is to make it as scary as possible without showing an actual impact. Then you can show it during programs in family hours so that you're targeting people who have yet to learn bad habits. It's working, because the number of fatalities from crashes with young drivers involved is becoming a smaller slice of the yearly fatal crash totals in South Australia.

It works, I was in the car when my with my six year old cousin when my uncle drove across the level crossing a couple of seconds after the lights and bells came on (a few seconds before even the gates start lowering) and was privy to an interesting discussion - mostly a lecture - between them about level crossings, road safety and stopping distances. What was really funny is that he's the head engineer for front steering, suspension and brakes at Ford in Australia, getting a lecture about stopping for hazards from his daughter!

Not all our ads are the scary type, some of them use wit like this one pitched at motorcyclists or the recent campaign around drugs which I think missed the mark a bit.


The upshot of all this is that the focus on younger people in safety campaigns is very deliberate. Older people have already learned bad habits and are not going to un-learn them easily, or assume that just because they haven't come unstuck yet that it's okay to dismiss it all as "elf 'n safety gone mad." It's just a pity that their actions do affect others.
As it has been since we got quieter trams (and quieter tracks) a few years ago, when our suburban rail network starts getting electrified in the next couple of years I'm expecting a lot of near-misses and some fatalities from people used to trains they can hear.
 

142094

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One of the worst things for a driver is a long straight road, which I guess Australia has a lot of.
 

DownSouth

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One of the worst things for a driver is a long straight road, which I guess Australia has a lot of.
Yep, the second-worst thing about them is actually that what's on either side is mostly quite boring. Then when somebody spots something actually interesting like a wedge-tailed eagle, they will fixate on that and stop focusing on keeping the car straight. Other dangers include the wildlife (an eagle that has just dined out at the Roadkill Café can't get out of the way easily, kangaroos or koalas do a huge amount of damage, and if you run over a snake you need to immediately look to see it's still on the road behind you), impatient idiots making crazy overtaking manoeuvres, the steering wheel getting too hot to hold, and the wind effects when you pass an oncoming road train.

The worst thing about those roads is doing that kind of drive without cruise control! It's a pity that the rail service to Melbourne only runs three times a week each way, takes over two hours longer and doesn't run overnight these days.


The long straights apply to rail as well, the legendary Trans-Australian Railway has the world's longest straight stretch of 478 km (297 mi) long. It's not exactly a major tourist attraction!
 
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