Mutter, rant [Matthew's Journal]

There was recently a train crash in Berkshire (details here). I have a few issues with the reportage:

OK, seven people died. I feel for their families, and don't want to belittle their grief. But. If it'd been a car crash with 7 fatalities, would it have made the national news? I think not. Whenever there's a train accident, it always makes the headlines, and the idea that railways are dangerous is re-inforced. They are much safer than road travel, FFS!
A train carrying 300 passengers hit a car at around 100mph. 7 People died, one of whom was in the car. Surely that's testimony to how well-designed trains are?
The national director of the Rail Passengers Council said that one "big question" that needs "answering quickly" - "why did the train derail in such a catastrophic fashion?". How about "because it hit a car at 100mph!"? Next you'll be telling me that cars should be designed to withstand side-on impacts from high-speed trains...
The RMT leader said that unmanned crossings on high-speed lines should be scrapped. It is becoming apparant that the car was placed on the line deliberately; so the thesis is that these crossings are unsafe because people can intentionally put cars in the way of trains?

Trains are a safe mode of transport, that we should be encouraging people to use instead of cars, not frightening them off with scare-mongering.

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Have you considered the political angle from which the reporting may coming from (on a subliminal level perhaps, but still a general BBC bias) (ie: Privitised rail companies are killing people for money that should be spent on safety)?

Not that it actually makes much difference. But I'll be damned if I let you get away with such moralising zeal without at least one comment being made.

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Considering that trains are currently about 8 times safer than cars, the BBC run the serious risk in that case of increasing the UK transport fatality rate.

and anyway, in the main part it isn't privatised rail companies who are; in general; responsible for the kind of safety failure that results in accidents; it's the maintainer of the permanent way -- Network Rail.

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why did the train derail in such a catastrophic fashion?". How about "because it hit a car at 100mph!"?

Is that definitely the speed it was travelling at? According to my mother, who is amongst other things a qualified locomotive driver, a train hitting a car at that speed should ordinarily throw the car clear of the tracks without derailing. She was trained not to slow down for cars on the track, because the car driver is likely to be killed in the collision at any speed, but the train passengers have a much better chance if the train does not slow down. It happened for real in one of their training sessions (not while she was driving, mercifully for her.)

Well, that's that the BBC was reporting. Whether that's a journalist mangling a statistic about the maximum speed on that section of track, I don't know.

I think that's the line speed of that section of track, and an InterCity train would definitely have been travelling at something approaching line speed.

(S)

According to the reports I heard, the driver applied the brakes before impact, but too late to avoid it, so the impact would have been at significant, but not full, speed.

The train did stay upright initially, just as the GNER train at Selby did[1]. It seems that what caused the carriages to overturn was hitting points about 100m beyond the crossing. Presumably the front wheels of the loco had derailed and tried to follow the tracks into the siding while the rest of the train (at that point still on the tracks) tried to go straight on.

[1] Unfortunately that was sufficiently derailed to be in the path of the oncoming goods train.

I must admit, if you're travelling that quickly and have such obvious places where obsticals can get onto the track, surely it makes sense to have some way of sensing if someone's left a car on the level crossing? I don't want to join the "all level crossings should be manned" brigade, but I always thought there *was* something like that - sensors so they knew where the trains were, and that the way was clear. Apparently not.

The sensors which know where the trains are work by the train completing an electric circuit between the two rails. It's this circuit which triggers the barriers and alarms on an automatic half-barrier crossing.

To do this for road vehicles you'd have to have some sort of weight sensor at the level crossing.

Full barrier level crossings are usually monitored by CCTV and controlled by a signaller.

(S)

(deleted comment)

Also, this style of crossing interdicts the road for less time; which is something that road users are typically in favour of.

"Automatic crossings, such as the one involved in this accident, don't work this way. There are no lineside signals, instead a detector is positioned usually about 60 seconds running-time away from the crossing to initiate the closing process."

Sadly if you attempt to stop cars for much longer than this (say 2 mins) before you can *see* a train, the number of accidents goes up as people start to ignore the barriers and zigzag around them. It's a trade off either way.

IME car crashes with 7 fatalities frequently do make the national news. I would say that road accident coverage is much more frequent than rail accident coverage (due to there being, as you say, more of it); it seems pretty much in proportion to me.

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