Christian Wolmar
A decade without a fatal rail accident on the national network is a significant feat, but a RAIB report illustrates that vigilance must remain paramount when faced with a growing threat of landslips, argues CHRISTIAN WOLMAR
Praise for RAIB.
OUR railways have undoubtedly become safer. Every year Andrew Evans, a professor at Imperial College, produces a statistical analysis of the trends in rail safety both in the UK and in Europe. The British section has made particularly comforting reading for several years, as there has not been a fatal rail accident for more than a decade on the national network (trams - and hence the deaths in the Croydon tram disaster in November last year - are not included in his analysis).
While there has not been a rail accident causing a fatality for the ninth successive year, an unprecedented record in the history of the railways, Evans drills down into the statistics by considering the numbers of potential causes of fatalities - such as collisions, derailments and overruns. These have reduced by an impressive 7% per year, testimony to a much-improved safety culture in the industry.
The year 2016 was also the second successive 12 months in which there were no fatalities caused by collisions between cars and trains, which generally happen at level crossings. This suggests that the work on crossing safety, which has long been a focus for the industry, is paying dividends.
However, while Evans’ report is reassuring, the very improvements it highlights can increase the risk of a disaster if those responsible for safety lose focus and become too relaxed about risk.
This is where the work of the Rail Accident Investigation Branch ( RAIB) is important. Created in 2005 and modelled on its aviation equivalent, RAIB was initially viewed with suspicion by some railway managers who felt that it was just one more bureaucratic organisation created out of the fragmentation from privatisation. They saw it as duplicating the role of the police and Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate (then part of the Health and Safety Executive, and now subsumed into the Office of Rail and Road).
In fact, by looking at accidents in a structured way, RAIB’s work has proved invaluable and it has now become an accepted part of the industry. This is because its role is not to lay blame, but to drill down to find the causes of accidents and (crucially) make recommendations and occasionally examine patterns that may emerge from different accidents.
But if anyone in the industry is starting to regard safety as a given and not anything to worry about, RAIB’s newly published annual report covering the year 2016 will disabuse them - because parts of it make scary reading.
The Grenfell Tower disaster shows what happens when complacency sets in. I did a couple of broadcasts from the scene a couple of days after the fire, and was struck by its proximity to the Ladbroke Grove disaster (less than a mile away) and of the potential similarities between the two.
I will never forget, on the day of the accident in 1999, doing a TV interview from the roof of a warehouse, from where one could see the wreckage of the Thames commuter train. One of the carriages was carved open like the lid of a sardine can, and the sight of the burned-out Grenfell Tower, whose shell will remain for months (if not longer) next to the Westway motorway, will equally be seared into my brain until I die.
Grenfell, the worst fire accident since the Second World War, was - just like Ladbroke
Grove - eminently preventable and caused by the failure to assess risk by senior people.
The railways are always just a hair’s breadth from disaster. It is a fantastic tribute to everyone involved in the industry that there have been so few accidents since the early days of privatisation, but the RAIB report demonstrates how the superb record of the past decade could so easily have looked very different.
Recently there have been several near misses on the rail network where only luck and timing prevented a major disaster. Most notable was the signal passed at danger by West Coast Railways’ train at Wootton Bassett in March 2015.
Re-reading the report, which came out in May last year, made my hair stand on end. If the steam-hauled train had passed the red signal just a minute or so earlier, it would have collided with a High Speed Train, causing what would have been Britain’s worst rail disaster in at least a generation (if not longer). It would also, incidentally, have killed off at a stroke the future operation of any steam-hauled locomotive on the national rail network.
Signals passed at danger (SPADs) are mostly a thing of the past, however. In this case, the drivers had actually turned off the Automatic Warning System, which is the primary prevention mechanism. And to a great extent the Train Protection and Warning System, introduced network-wide after the Ladbroke Grove accident, has greatly reduced the chance of a SPAD causing a major disaster.
On today’s railway, it is the cause of another near miss that presents a far greater risk. That was the derailment of a train from Milton Keynes on the Up Slow line at the entrance of the Watford tunnel, caused by a landslip. Fortunately the train, although travelling at 70mph, remained upright. It was hit a glancing blow by a Down service two minutes later, but despite damage to both trains there were only a couple of minor injuries.
It could have been so much worse, and it is no surprise that of the eight potential areas which RAIB reckons present a systemic risk, the first it mentions is “the possible failure of earthworks and structures” which are mostly the result of climate change.
Since its creation, the RAIB has published 25 reports on accidents caused by such failures. And it warns that with climate change, there is a great need for the railways to be particularly vigilant in this respect. There have been several spectacular events, such as the slide that caused the recent lengthy closure of the Settle-Carlisle Line and the Hatfield Colliery landslip in 2013, which so easily could have resulted in a disaster.
Other issues picked out in the annual report include risks at the platform/door interface, level crossings, and (interestingly) fatigue. RAIB reports that on the latter progress has been slow, with train companies slow to recognise the risks that unsuitable rostering can pose.
Ensuring there is another decade without a death caused by a rail accident - the last was the death at the derailment of a Virgin train at Grayrigg in February 2007 - will require more than just more of the same. It will need everyone in the rail industry to be aware of the risks, and not to hold back from reporting them to managers. It will need a good dose of luck, too.