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Exactly... what if someone blew a tyre or some other type of crash, the result would have been the same. The Rail authority must take (I believe) the lion's share of the blame by failing to ensure the safety of their passengers
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Philosophical question - considering that no transport network since the world began has been able to ensure the safety of their passengers, why should this be expected of GNER/Railtrack in the exceptional circumstances at Great Heck.
When I was at school a lorry went into a schoolmates house, on a blind bend. Should the householder be responsible for inconveniently siting his house where lorries could come off the road and hit it? Ludicrous, but an exact analogy.
The lion's share of responsibility lies where the courts put it, on the driver who fell asleep. Secondarily you could say the people responsible for the design of the M62 bridge. The railway, which was in perfect working order and was there before the motorway, is entirely blameless. It's worth remembering that the collision with the vehicle was very minor, the deaths were the result of the derailed wheels damaging a set of points further up the line directing the express into the oncoming freight train. The exceptional consequences should not blind us to the realisation that this was a simple road traffic acccident caused by driving while unfit to drive.
Having said which, it's worth the Highways Agency conducting an investigation into road/rail overbridge safety, particularly on motorways. Quite what you do I'm unsure, a nice big concrete wall would be good, but practically guaranteed to total the driver, who of course survived Great Heck. How far back you run the wall is an interesting question too, there was a wall at the site of course, but the muppet was already off the road by the start of it.
The railway is entitled to work on the principle that, having taken reasonable steps* to stop objects on the line from killing people in trains, they can operate in safety. They should concentrate on miniming risk arising from the operation of the railway, not from the operation of private motor vehicles.
* fencing, track circuits, tripwires (Severn Tunnel has these) are all designed in part or in whole to keep foreign objects off the railway, or alert the railway to the presence of these. Also the express at Great Heck was composed of modern buckeye-coupled monocoque coaches which generally remain upright and in-line and intact in derailments, and did everything expected of them in the accident (look at the line of intact, upright coaches in the pictures after a 142mph impact).