Safety off track with speeding train drivers

TRAIN drivers distracted by COVID concerns, personal problems and chatting to colleagues are blowing through stop signals and even into level crossings open to cars.

The majority of drivers were speeding at the time of their mistake.

The Courier-Mail can reveal the rate of red lights being run on Queensland’s rail lines is climbing as investigation reports released under Right to Information laws give an insight into what was happening in the cab at the time. Drivers lost focus and overran signals by as much as 195m, including at three different level crossings.

There were 33 “Signal Passed at Danger” (SPAD) events in the last nine months of 2020 – or almost one a week, but the rate is higher now.

Several drivers said that they had been worrying about the impacts of the pandemic, one was copying a phone number so they could check out a passing house for sale, one was so sick they had a severe coughing fit and couldn’t breathe and another was distracted by their driving tutor. In two separate incidents, trains ran into the Curlew St level crossing at Sandgate – both times because a blown fuse caused a blackedout signal, and once when the boom gates were still open to cars.

In April, a driver was distracted watching a group of youths failing to social distance at a pedestrian crossing.

Luckily, it was a 1am and there was no traffic when it entered the flashing crossing with boom gates still up.

A second train overshot the same signal by 150m while a car was waiting at the crossing with boom gates down in September. In November, a train rolled into the Dawson Parade level crossing at low speed at Grovely when the driver didn’t see the signal.

Cars had been sighted crossing just moments before.

A Toowoomba train ran a red signal in July, but stopped before reaching the Bridge St crossing used by thousands of cars a day.