A FOOTPATH CROSSING
For a moment I forget that I’m on a RAIL field visit, and it feels like Julia Bradbury is going to appear. We follow an overgrown footpath with a stile at the end, surrounded by trees. It’s hard to believe there’s a railway nearby.
As we walk towards the stile at the end, Wake starts looking around at the path.
“We’re in the growing season but the path is still clear, so this route is obviously used,” he points out.
I half expect Wake to produce a deerstalker and magnifying glass from his rucksack. Instead, he whips out a standard issue ORR notebook and pen.
“So, first of all I note down where I am and what time it is.”
He makes a note of the line speed for the area (75mph in both directions) and describes the spot as “quite rural on the edge of a village”. He stops to listen and determines there are no major sources of background noise. The only thing we can hear are the birds singing in the trees.
He takes some photographs and consults the inspection list (see panel). We decide that the likelihood of vulnerable users here is reduced by the need to cross a stile to reach the crossing. Over we go. The first thing to consider is what the decision point is for this crossing. That’s the position at which you stand to make your decision to cross; the equivalent of a kerb on roads.
Says Wake: “What I’m focused on is foreseeable human error. When somebody crosses the road, makes a mistake and gets hit by a road vehicle, you could simply say: ‘well that was their own fault for crossing when they shouldn’t’.
“I think any sensible accident investigator at a level crossing would ask ‘was it clear’? Did something contribute to their decision to cross? A simple example might be familiarity with a crossing, let’s say on the edge of a town, on a railway line where you don’t often see trains. Or there may be persistent distractions present. It’s not always just a straight lack of attention.”
I think we’d all be lying if we said we’d never made a mistake because we were distracted by something that caught our attention at a critical moment. So it’s an inspector’s job to look for ways to avoid potential distraction when we make the decision to cross the railway - as we found out…
As we watch in the Up direction, a train passes. While we’re still watching, one thunders past us in the Down direction - not in the direction we’re facing.
“What you saw there was a very good