Disparity between road & rail crash coverage

[Waverley125]

The Lambrigg crash which caused 1 death and a few bumps & bruises was national front-page news for several weeks. Just read of a coach crash at the M25/M4 junction that occurred Jan.07 of 77 passengers 2 deaths immediatley, one later in hospital. Also several severe injuries including severed limbs & smashed bones. Driver convicted of death by dangerous driving, going down a slip road at 80mph.

Now, imagine this was a rail crash. Say, a driver pushing an HST through penmanshiel at 140mph, 1 in every 25 (so assuming full loading, 20 or so people) killed, plus huge injuries. Would be national news. This coach crash was nowhere near the front page, or national news. Why? Have 3000 road deaths a year numbed us to the dangers of road transport?

 

[mrcheek]

its a very strange phenomenon thats been known about for a long time. as a result of media obsession with rail crashes, it affects safety procedures as well.
when there is a new safety feature or development in regard to transport, economists evaluate it with cost-benefit analysis. they weigh up the cost of the safety feature against how many lives it could save. and for this, they have to put a value on a human life (sounds kinda sick, but this is what they have to do). for road, the value is approx £150,000. for rail its £5 million. and people wonder why railways are so expensive....

 

[me123]

Well, if a road vehicle crashes, the reasons are usually simple. The driver may be intoxicated, overtired, or there could be a problem with the vehicle itself. All of these causes can be easily diagnosed. Occasionally there's a problem with the actual road, but this is usually picked up on very quickly and 99 times out of 100 causes no major problem.

A rail incident lake Grayrigg, however, was due to a problem on a set of points. This is put down to negligence of the engineers who are supposed to maintain the line and this problem was not realised until the train crashed and, sadly, one person died. Unfortunately, trains cannot swerve out of the way and, at the speed they are travelling at, cannot be expected to notice this problem.

Also, vehicle crashes in general directly affect fewer people than rail crashes. Of course, there were fewer fatalities in Grayrigg but many more people were in the derailed train that could have died, and were indeed injured in some way or another.

Finally, I also put it down to blame culture. In a car crash, you can easily see who was to blame, be it the driver, the suicidal maniac who through himself in front of the car or even the weather. In rail, you cannot easily see the problem. It took a while IIRC to diagnose the points as being the problem, and even then it took a while to point the finger of blame. In the meantime, the media could have a bit of fun trying to blame everyone in sight, thus increasing the public's demand for someone to "take the blame".

 

[GNERman]

Seen as though the railways are 9 times safer than thre roads it would be a bigger story, but to not tell people of this is disgusting! (I didn't know)

 

[mrcheek]

"blame culture". like when the Ladbroke Grove crash was blamed on the dead driver for going thru a red. even though theres no way he could have got onto the same track as another train without a screw up by the points operator. or possibly, a deliberate moving of the points to cause a deliberate rail crash, as pahse one of the labour governments attempts to bankrupt railtrack....

 

[Metroland]

They don't report road crashes much because 33,000 killed or seriously injured per year is 'normal'. Lot of lost GDP and costs that, not that the RAC will ever use that in their figures or the policing required to prevent some of it.

 

[Ben]

The Lambrigg crash which caused 1 death and a few bumps & bruises was national front-page news for several weeks. Just read of a coach crash at the M25/M4 junction that occurred Jan.07 of 77 passengers 2 deaths immediatley, one later in hospital. Also several severe injuries including severed limbs & smashed bones. Driver convicted of death by dangerous driving, going down a slip road at 80mph.

Now, imagine this was a rail crash. Say, a driver pushing an HST through penmanshiel at 140mph, 1 in every 25 (so assuming full loading, 20 or so people) killed, plus huge injuries. Would be national news. This coach crash was nowhere near the front page, or national news. Why? Have 3000 road deaths a year numbed us to the dangers of road transport?

Im sorrry but your very wrong, was frontpage stuff at the time.

 

[LittleRedTrain]

If it is this crash you are thinking of, then it was actually front page news at the time, and there was quite a lot of uproar about it. This is presumably because it was actually public transport, rather than a private vehicle.

However, I agree with your point generally, people do seem to be much less worried about deaths on the roads than the rails.

 

[class 313]

Mainly because rail travel is much safer than road travel. Also, road traffic accidents are much more common compared to train crashes. To be fair, rail crashes are more newsworthy than road accidents. Of course there will be the oddities and all that. But in general, rail crashes are usually 'bigger' and make a better story. Though again, this isn't always true.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

Another example, not just illustrating the disparity of media coverage between rail and road, but also the amount of additional legal work that follows a rail incident and the potential for massive stock and infrastructure changes following an investigation.

Some might remember a young man, Paul C-W, was injured on Gunnersby station when a Cl 313 began to pull away from the station around 11pm a year ago?
Well, despite the views by many that he was drunk or at least fooling around and maybe got off the train and then tried to jump back on as the doors were closing, he sued.
For £300,000 I think.

I was in the High Court to listen to some of the masses of documentation and pictures produced as evidence and to listen to some of the specialist railway witnesses. The Judge's decision has not been released yet.

Its not just the amount of specialist evidence and legal representatives that makes it disproportionate to road, but the prosecution (acting for the injured man) was trying to argue that Silverlink was negligent because they hadn't modified their trains to allow the guard to open the window in his local door - because they hadn't installed CCTV or mirrors to allow the driver to look down the length of the train - and a few other procedural changes which guards and dispatchers could adopt.
Just suppose the young man wins the case - will Judge Reddihough also agree that rail operators should make all these expensive alterations across the network - just because of one injury (an injury to someone who might have been drunk and behaving recklessly ?)
[I intend no offence Paul C-W and regret that he has been injured and I do not have a view on his legal arguments.]

From remarks the judge made, I think he has a basic understanding of railways as a user, but prob. little understanding of the real cost in making network-wide changes.
[I have no doubt the Judge will base his decision on the evidence and not his personal experience.]

Wouldn't happen after a car hit a drunk.

 

[Metroland]

And of course this is why the railway network is getting so expensive...

The same doesn't apply to roads of course, which is why we're allowed 44 tonne trucks to travel at a closing speeds of 100mph a few yards from and towards 1 tonne cars, possibly driven badly or with no insurance, or in bad weather, all over the country as we speak. Yet, any Mk1s running about on the railway today, will have to be locked out of passenger use, even though rear end collisions (which are very rare) have the full protection of a signalling system devised over 150 years...

If the same standards were applied to roads, then HGVs would be banned altogether.