Comment


The root of the problem is, of course, that public perceptions


of transport dangers are spectacularly skewed. There are probably still some people who avoid the railways so as not to be caught up in another Ladbroke Grove or Potters Bar crash. Yet in 2009, according to the rail safety and standards board, the average number of fatalities risked per billion passenger kilometres travelled by car in the UK was 1.56, against just 0.06 on the railways. The car risk was, in other words, 26 times higher. Some 1,850 people died on the UK’s roads in 2010. The very different risks of travelling by train and by road at least


partly reflect the different levels of safety spending. In a lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2002, John Armitt, then Network Rail’s chief executive, said the Train Protection and Warning System then being installed in the wake of the 1999 Ladbroke Grove crash was costing £5m per life saved. That figure, he said, was above the £1m to £3m per fatality avoided that the industry then considered normal – and far above the £1m normally used in road calculations. I have seen far sharper contrasts elsewhere between the numbers used in the two modes. It is tempting to conclude, as some railway people do, that the railways are simply hostage to health and safety hysteria. Without it, perhaps the railways could run far more cheaply and simply. Yet the railways do need to maintain a distinctive safety approach.


While the tolerance of the annual road death toll is disturbing, it is extremely rare for a road accident to kill even as many as seven. In the 20th century, by contrast, the worst British railway accidents killed 226 people at Quintinshill in 1915, 112 people at Harrow & Wealdstone in 1952 and 90 at Lewisham in 1957. The risks are now drastically lower than at those times, but the railway clearly still poses a real, but minuscule, risk of catastrophic loss of life. Today’s trains are heavier and faster than those that crumpled at Quintinshill and Harrow & Wealdstone, even if they are also far stronger. Exceptional effort must be put into avoiding, as far as is practicable, a crash involving such a train at speed. There is also, clearly, a very different contract between the railway


and its passengers from the one between drivers, or between a roads authority and a driver. Drivers have at least some control – their own speed, the condition of their vehicle and so on – over the dangers they face, even if the extent of the control is deceptive. Rail passengers have almost no control, except perhaps when it comes to their behaviour when boarding, over their safety on a train. Grayrigg’s individual circumstances hardly make it easier to argue


that the railway has too many safety systems. Checks that would have discovered the disgraceful condition of the fatal points were omitted, mainly, it seems, because of the chaotic management of the line involved. Whether the blame lies mainly with the manager who omitted the inspection or the higher-ups he had warned about their lax processes, the greater operational discipline needed across


Mainline railway Bus or coach Car


Pedal cycle Pedestrian Motorcycle


Fatality risk per billion travellers km 0.1 0.3 1.6


hours 3 5


66


21.0 26.4 83.6


Source: RSSB 2010-11 Safety Performance Report DECEMBER 2011 PAGE 17


268 186


3,513


trips 3 5


66


268 186


3,513


‘Today’s trains are heavier and faster than those that crumpled at Quintinshill and Harrow & Wealdstone’


Network Rail must clearly extend to management of safety-critical work. Nevertheless, the apparent public willingness to accept increased


road danger should embolden the railway industry to discuss safety at least a little more frankly. Part of the DfT’s argument for relaxing motorway safety standards has been that modern vehicles have better braking systems and withstand crashes better than those of the past. While it will be no comfort to Mrs Masson’s family, it is surely a powerful symbol of the railway industry’s progress that the train involved in the Grayrigg accident withstood a 90mph crash and tumble down an embankment with only a single fatality. The real safety measure now, in fact, might be to save costs, rather


than to introduce further major safety initiatives. A carload of the people caught up in the M5 crash or one of the truckloads of goods might, after all, have gone by rail given lower costs. A perfectly safe railway that no one can afford to use will keep no one safe at all.


ROBERT WRIGHT is the shipping and logistics correspondent for the Financial Times: robert.wright@ft.com


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