RAIL SAFETY
A Safety first
lthough the UK’s rail safety record is far from unblemished,
the last few years have seen safety improving in a variety of areas on our railways.
“In the last twelve months the rail industry has maintained some of the very positive trends which we have seen in recent years, whilst in some areas it has delivered its best ever performance,” says Anson Jack, director of policy, research and risk at RSSB.
“Although this does not apply to all areas, we have had three years now without a single fatality from a train accident, with either a passenger or a member of the workforce.”
Despite this good performance, it has not all been good news over the last twelve moths.
“There were, very unfortunately, three members of the workforce killed on infrastructure work and although every loss of life is a tragedy and is taken very seriously by the industry, that loss of life is towards the lower end of what recent trends have been. Everybody within the industry wants to achieve zero and so Network Rail, along with its contractors, will be looking to find ways to do this whilst learning the lessons of these incidents.
“The more positive news is around the improvements to safety in the rail industry, particularly in terms of train accidents involving passengers and rail workers, coupled with record levels of performance and passenger numbers. We
62 rtm Anson Jack
The UK’s record on rail safety is among the best in the world but the challenge facing the industry is to reduce costs whilst retaining that record. Rail Technology Magazine asked Anson Jack where those improvements could be made
reliability, which involves the better use of technology, data capture and analysis systems, is the route to driving further improvements in performance whilst improving safety and reducing cost.”
see that the industry has been performing very well whilst carrying a lot of people and doing it safely.”
There is, however, always room for improvement.
“Ultimately, safety performance is part of broader business performance. There has been some very significant work going on in the industry around areas such as safety culture, including producing better definitions of competencies to do each job and, in many areas, exploiting technology to reduce the opportunity for human error – even reducing the need for human intervention.
“Reducing the exposure to risk for people on the railways can also lead to cost reductions and this is an example of safety and business improvement working together.
“It might sound counter- intuitive at first but RSSB says cost reduction is consistent with safety and is not something which directly contradicts it. For instance, a very reliable train and infrastructure will, by definition, be very safe. A risk-based approach to asset
One area which has caused concern with the general public and the media has been around the issue of level crossings. Whilst a number of people continue to die every year as a result of incidents at level crossings, the vast majority of these incidents are attributable to the behaviour of the pedestrian, cyclist or motorist – sometimes an unintentional error but at other times a deliberate violation of the law.
Particularly in Scotland, some level crossings have no barriers and users must rely on either a set of lights to guide their decision or, in some cases, call the local signalman to check that the line is clear.
So what is the RSSB’s position on this?
“There are many level crossings that are fairly basic and fundamentally rely on the actions and responsibility of the user. This is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
“Level crossings are one of the most exposed parts of the railways, because this is where one transport system crosses another and the rail industry has made some steps forward in terms of upgrading level crossings throughout Britain. Indeed, Britain’s level crossings are the safest in Europe.
“We take the line that 95 per cent of risk at level crossings lies with the people using them and fifty percent of that risk relates to wilful misuse of the level crossing. So, fundamentally this is about road safety and level crossing risk is a very small proportion of road safety risk. Railways cannot address the overall level of road safety in this country, nor should they.
“Unfortunately, people take risks and whilst the railways can do a number of reasonable things in order to mitigate that risk, to take it away completely would involve extraordinary cost which would, of course, ultimately fall on the taxpayer and wouldn’t be justified.
“We strongly support a risk- based approach towards all aspects of the railways - including level crossings. Network Rail’s approach, which involves gradually upgrading level crossings where their use is rising, is a good example which is supported by RSSB research.
“There are occasional examples of where things can be changed perhaps arising from an accident or one of the inspections which Network Rail carries out on its level crossings where they use a tool called the All Level Crossing Risk Model - which is the result of a joint research project between the RSSB and Network Rail – to decide whether there are any upgrades to the crossing that can be justified on safety grounds. But a wholesale upgrade of level crossings would require significant public funding and in our view would not be a justifiable use of taxpayers’ money.”
Oct/Nov 10
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