The weekend saw a tragic accident on a level crossing near Reading with a car on the line causing it. It seems likely at this point that it was a deliberate act for the driver to go on to the line. A selfish way to commit suicide by any account.
I’ve just watched a Newsnight report summing up what happened, and the mentioned accidents such as Hatfield and Potters Bar. While acknowledging that these were caused by different things, I think it’s completely wrong to mention them in the same breath as this incident.
Of course level crossings are dangerous places – particularly so on high speed lines, but even if we put CCTV, tunnels and bridges at every crossing, it wouldn’t stop a determined person getting their car onto the track.
And let’s put this tragedy into perspective. This was the first time for twenty years that passengers have died in such an accident, whilst normally it’s the car driver (18 dead in the last year). But 3,431 people died on the roads in 2002. That’s over 9 people a day. And over half of those are car drivers or their passengers.
Do we spend billions making the roads safer? More speed cameras perhaps, or traffic calming measures? That’ll go down well.
We can never be totally safe. But trains are pretty safe. More people died in car accidents on Saturday than at Ufton Nervet. But nobody’s examining learnings to made from those accidents. The same number of people also died on Sunday. And today. And will do tomorrow. Many of those people will also be as blameless as the passengers on that fateful train.
But what to do? Speed limiters in cars? Close down dangerous roads. 30mph max speed limits.
I rest my case.