Thread: Is £2m pounds enough for 31 lives?
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Old 06-04-2004, 11:19   #15
SMHarman
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Join Date: Jun 2003
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Re: Is £2m pounds enough for 31 lives?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
There is a difference between an honest mistake/ unavoidable accident and negligence. As I recall, in this instance, the red light the commuter train went through was badly sited and hard to see. This was documented and had been reported to managers of several occasions but they did nothing about it. That makes this accident a negligent act by the management (not the driver) as they knew about it and if they had re-sited the red light i'm sure this terrible accident would have been avoided.
Thought this extract from BBKings post on the other thread was worth posting here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BBKing
Ladbroke Grove, where a badly designed layout and a badly trained driver missing badly sited signals caused an appalling crash. The layout was designed by Westinghouse and BR in the early 90s under the assumption that all trains would have automatic train protection in case of missing signals. In fact two out of the three types of train on the route had ATP, the exception of course being Thames, as BR didn't fit it to their trains in the years immediately pre-privatisation and Thames didn't in the years immediately afterwards, and the HSE didn't press for it, being too busy nitpicking about footpaths by the trackside and other major threats to railway safety.

The layout at the points was therefore designed on the basis that no trains would go through a red light, so they could be left safely pointing in the direction that was the easiest for the computer signalling to cope with, which unfortunately meant a possible head-on collision in the case of the signal being missed, instead of a possible sidelong collision with a train travelling in the same direction. So cost cutting on the original design, assumptions about the nature of the traffic that were never revisited after privatisation (Railtrack would have said 'Thames has to fit ATP' and Thames would have said 'RT has to make the layout safer' and no one was there to knock their heads together).
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