SAFETY & PASSENGER INFORMATION
A united front
The RSSB has just published its Overview of Safety Performance for 2013. Colin Dennis, director of policy, research and risk, spoke to RTM.
S
afety on the railway continues to improve, with 2013 the sixth year running without
any passenger or workforce fatalities in train accidents. But there are a number of issues that remain, and the industry must continue to tackle these, working together to reduce risk.
RTM talked to the RSSB’s director of policy, research and risk,
Colin Dennis, about
the organisation’s latest Overview of Safety Performance.
The overview showed that passenger fatalities dropped to zero in 2012, before jumping back up to a more expected level, six passenger fatalities, in 2013. So was 2012 a freak year? Or are there lessons there that can be replicated in the future?
Dennis said: “The fact that it went down to zero was quite remarkable really.”
He suggested that the one main difference between those two years had been the presence of the 2012 London Olympics.
“There is a school of thought that the effort and initiatives in and around the Olympics would have made some difference, although how you would translate the two weeks of the Olympics into the whole year being so good…
“Obviously there was a lot of management put in, which wasn’t sustained for the whole year – but you could imagine some of the feel-good factor around the country having some impact.”
104 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 14
Even with the fatality rate back up at average levels, he noted that it was “nothing like” the statistics seen ten years ago.
Platform-train interface
The platform edge was highlighted as a key area of risk, and Dennis said the RSSB was initiating a coordinated industry approach to this, alongside train operating companies and Network Rail.
Accidents and injuries at the platform-train interface have a big impact on the operational performance of the railway as well as safety, and the busier the railway gets, the larger this risk.
“The industry has got together to form a platform-train interface strategy group, chaired by Network Rail and facilitated by RSSB for the industry.
It’s about the industry
actively managing the platform-train interface in the short, medium and long term, because
there are a lot of longer-term infrastructure issues that need consideration; designing optimum ways forward for that as well as really sitting down and thinking about, as a collective, what we can do to manage it on a short-term basis.”
Most passenger deaths are in stations, commonly at the platform edge. The new strategy group is developing a strategy to tackle this risk and is expected to report by the end of the year. Dennis said: “We’ll be able to show the way forward for the industry – it’s a very positive step in relation to recognising the location that a lot of the fatalities do occur at.”
Standardising safety
Other measures include ensuring consistent messaging for passengers across different stations and operators. Currently, different poster campaigns, rules and messages can “provide a confusing message to passengers”, while they should be aiming to help people
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