Docklands/Serco Fine

[WatcherZero]

Serco has been fined £450,000 and costs of £43,773 by the ORR for an incident on 2nd April 2007 when CCTV operators failed to stop a DLR train hitting someone who had been pushed onto the tracks at All Saints station.

http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.10090

 

[Dennis]

From the report...."ORR investigated and found that Serco had an inadequate procedure in place for stopping trains in an emergency. The company allowed control room staff to decide whether to stop trains based partly on CCTV images. The CCTV system was not designed or intended for this purpose."

I've often wondered how the trains would be stopped in an emergency like this - I find it hard to understand why no adequate procedure was in place from day 1 of driverless operations. But what would be a reasonably failsafe way of halting the trains?

 

[lauraGeeGee]

When a report is received that there is a possibility of unauthorised persons track side the normal procedure was to instruct the PSA to be at the front of the train and drive the train manually at a much reduced speed. The same if there is a report of any sort of obstruction on the track.

Instead, on this occasion, they looked on the CCTV and couldn't see anything on the track (the area didn't actually cover all the track anyway). The train then ran automatically without the PSA at the front. It so could have been avoided.

The trains can be stopped at any time by the control room (when in automatic modes) or by the PSA using the emergency stop plunger at the ends of each vehicle or at the door control panels.

 

[Dennis]

Thanks for that reply - relying on reported 'incidents', is not quite the same as an alert pair of eyeballs continuously facing forward.

Fitting trains with forward facing cameras and centrally monitoring these would seem like a sensible thing to do, especially if coupled with automated image analysis which could detect obstructions and issue alerts.

 

[ChrisCooper]

With technology these days it shouldn't be too hard to fit the trains with some form of obstruction detection that would apply the brakes if it detected anything on the track that was big enough to be a person or to be a danger to the train. Just look at the number of "robotic" appliances (vacum cleaners, lawn mowers etc) that can detect objects and stop. It's just tuning the system so that it doesn't give false alarms too often. Naturally sensitivity ultimatly tends to be a financial issue, balencing the cost of false alarms against the cost of undetected incidents.

 

[lauraGeeGee]

To be honest, even with that sort of equipment, it wont always stop a train in time. I can imagine trains constantly coming to a stop due to litter etc, even with the fine tuning.

The train did actually stop on this occasion from what I understand as an obstruction was detected, unfortunately it didn't stop in time.

It could have been avoided if someone was at the front of the train to stop it. That is why they were fined.
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To be honest, I do get the impression on here that the "driverless" trains aren't that popular!

I do feel that nowadays as that railway has got so much busier, it's about time the PSA was permanently positioned at the front and in a cab! I'm surprised after this particular incident as well as previous derailments that they haven't been forced to introduce this now.

On those occasions when positioned at the front during hours of darkness, you can hardly see outside due to the bright lights in the train so it's virtually pointless being there anyway!

 

[starrymarkb]

I thought there were emergency stop plungers on the platforms aswell..

 

[lauraGeeGee]

I thought there were emergency stop plungers on the platforms aswell..

Correct!

I really don't know why anyone didn't operate one, I suppose they didn't know they existed. That's if there were others around at the time.

Even if a plunger is operated on the opposite platform, it stops trains on both lines and also closes the track 50 meters each way out side the station. It doesn't remove the traction current from the 3rd rail but it does indeed stop the trains.