Ludlow Crash - No further action against tractor driver

[Bikeman78]

Isn't that the job of a journalist/news outlet?

The police might generally be a reliable witness to the BBC but it would be prudent to fact check things. Besides, they had photos and even videos of the crash when they reported it the first couple of times - seems like an easy thing to find an actual photo of the crossing from an internal image bank.

The more on this story section has links and photos to the incident!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Oct 2025 ==

I'm sure there are nuances but taking 4 months to decide whether, after a phone call giving instructions, someone followed them or didn't follow them still feels rather excessive. It would seem the tractor driver's involvement can be boiled down to some pretty basic premises: he did call and ignored instructions, he did call and followed them, or didn't call and cracked on. Since we know the third isn't right, how can it take so long to decide if it's A or B?

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Are calls to signallers recorded? If yes, it should have taken a few hours to determine if it was A or B. If not, then it's a lot more difficult.

 

[norbitonflyer]

The point is still valid that the wording used did, I think, suggest that the train's speed had somehow been an issue.

Well it was relevant to the severity of the collision that trains were permiited to travel at that speed on that line. There is no suggestion that the train was travelling above the speed limit.

 

[DerekC]

The prolongation of this thread really is at "angels dancing on a pin" level, carried on by the pro- and anti-BBC protagonists. I have just read all the BBC articles linked in the OP and they are pretty factual. The "incident saw the train ... reach 80mph" wording could be better, but it isn't a headline, it's part of the wording of the article and if you read the whole thing I really can't see an implication that the train driver might have been at fault. Personally I don't see that there is any more to be said until the RAIB report comes out and we know the facts.

 

[Horizon22]

I'm sure there are nuances but taking 4 months to decide whether, after a phone call giving instructions, someone followed them or didn't follow them still feels rather excessive. It would seem the tractor driver's involvement can be boiled down to some pretty basic premises: he did call and ignored instructions, he did call and followed them, or didn't call and cracked on. Since we know the third isn't right, how can it take so long to decide if it's A or B?

There may have been a mechanical issue with his vehicle, and may not have been maintained to the legal standard or the BTP wanted to investigate the possibility. I have no idea if that is true, but it is an example of a line of enquiry which may have extended things.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Oct 2025 ==

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Are calls to signallers recorded? If yes, it should have taken a few hours to determine if it was A or B. If not, then it's a lot more difficult.

Yes, certainly the inbound call to the signaller would have been.

 

[Spartacus]

I'm sure there are nuances but taking 4 months to decide whether, after a phone call giving instructions, someone followed them or didn't follow them still feels rather excessive. It would seem the tractor driver's involvement can be boiled down to some pretty basic premises: he did call and ignored instructions, he did call and followed them, or didn't call and cracked on. Since we know the third isn't right, how can it take so long to decide if it's A or B?

You'd have to look at did the user use the crossing as they should. It's not unknown for a call to be made to a user worked crossing once, but then it to be used multiple times by that user without any subsequent calls, often only discovered due to a report from a driver, crossing examiner or sometimes MOP, I've witnessed it myself when a harvest is been brought in, gate propped open, tractor & trailer going back & forth with a few cautious looks, dropping a few spuds every time it leaves the field. You'd also want to be looking at did the crossing take place right after the call or was there some unexpected delay, perhaps due to a mechanical issue or some other distraction, and if the crossing took place as expected, with no unexpected stops or delays. Was the exit gate opened before crossing, or did the user stop on the crossing before opening it, again, that frequently happens.

Even things like was it properly established which crossing was being used. Sometimes local terminology isn't the same as railway, so there could have been confusion there, caused by either side.

That said, four months for the police to decide not to take any further action, or at least to get around to officially declaring it, doesn't seem like all that long to me. I've been involved with an accident which the police pretty quickly decided further action was very unlikely, but actually getting official confirmation took probably a couple of months more.

 

[josh-j]

The police have been known to leave people under investigation up to the legal limit (which at least used to be 12 months) even when no realistic case against them exists, and then just bin them off - creating prolonged uncertainty, of course.

In this case they may just not have got round to closing off the investigation. I certainly wouldn't read much into it - the report will be forthcoming soon enough.

 

[Annetts key]

I appreciate this, but I don't believe that excuses inaccurate reporting. If they couldn't find a photo of the actual crossing they could have simply run the story without a photo. They also have photos and videos of the crossing from earlier reports so I'm not sure why they didn't just re-use one. They re-use photos on update stories all the time, it's par for the course.

Well, yes and no. BBC News is a very large organisation and they will have reporters with rail specialism. Either it's a big enough story to make use of one of their specialist reporters, or it's minor enough to just not put a photo up because it'd be better to have no photo than a photo of one which isn't of the actual site, when the specific sites are often quite an important factor in such stories. They also could've taken the somewhat obvious step of asking Network Rail for a comment about the crossing, at which point they may have highlighted the potential drawbacks of certain types.

I don't think it's too much to ask that an organisation like the BBC which strives itself on accuracy should not make simple mistakes. I don't believe it's a simple mistake, particularly given their earlier articles mentioned that it was a user-worked crossing which may be part of the issue, and had photos of the actual crossing. I'm not expecting the BBC to know the calculation of tractive effort, but if the entire story is about a crash at a level crossing, it seems pretty basic to me to use a photo of the actual crossing, or at worst, a photo of a different crossing of the same type with an explanation that it's a similar crossing.

I'm afraid that if news agencies don't have the money to accurately report a story, they simply shouldn't report it. Financial pressures are unfortunately not an excuse. And as mentioned further up, they could've just omitted the photo. That would be avoiding perfect being the enemy of the good while preserving journalist integrity and press accuracy.

To reiterate arguably the main point - the entire story here is about a user-controlled level crossing, which are known to be problematic; it's not a minor detail that the photo they use features an automatic half-barrier crossing with lights and sirens and a yellow box and automatic barriers. Showing the latter in a photo when the crossing is of the former, I think is quite misleading. The differences in crossing types are very likely to be material to RAIB's findings.

The local (as in my region) BBC reporters do not have anyone with any rail specialism. I've chatted to BBC reporters that have covered railway related incidents. They were in the main, normal nice people. In terms of knowing about the railway though, they don't know much more than a typical member of the public.

And as far as I am aware, the national BBC News also doesn't have anyone on staff with any rail specialism. That's why they sometimes ask the likes of Christian Wolmar to contribute.

Certainly, I've contacted the BBC in the past when they have made errors in reports about the railway.

The more on this story section has links and photos to the incident!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Oct 2025 ==


I was thinking exactly the same thing. Are calls to signallers recorded? If yes, it should have taken a few hours to determine if it was A or B. If not, then it's a lot more difficult.

For many, many years (far longer in fact, I just forget the actual date, but to give you a clue, the first voice recorder in one PSB used VHS video tapes to simultaneously record multiple telephones, that's all the telephones on the PSB operating floor) all calls to all signal boxes, PSBs and signalling centres in the area where I worked have been recorded. These days the voice reorders use digital technology and an appropriate person can access the voice reorder remotely. I've been provided with copies of calls by company email between drivers and signallers as part of investigations in the past.