"Train Collision on level crossing, Newquay"

[bluenoxid]

For the amount of money it would cost to implement and no tangible benefit, what's the point?

For my area alone, with just one set for a fire station, you are looking at least £25k to change to the "new" system.

And are you suggesting that motorway gantry signals which operate on exactly the same principle (left:right wig wag) should also have a steady red?

I'm sorry but I just cannot see what the benefit of having an additional steady red signal would have, considering that for the vast majority of driver the meaning of a wig wag is blatantly clear.

It would be a significant legislatory and logistical 'mare to implement.

A death is priced at approximately £3 million

We need to upgrade crossings anyway so implementing as part of a rolling cycle particularly at open crossings of which there are over 100 would be very beneficial. After all, other crossings have barriers and the consequences of side swiping a fire truck is likely to be less severe despite the vehicle and response involved.

Personally a barrier would be more preferable to rail crossings but only if that is a stated aim and funded project. Otherwise, I stand by the constant red light as an interim measure that would deliver a clear and consistent signal.

 

[boing_uk]

Otherwise, I stand by the constant red light as an interim measure that would deliver a clear and consistent signal.

Why?

Currently there are two meanings of a red light.

1) A steady red signal which is a traffic signal normally found for road / road crossings.

2) A flashing red signal for everything else unusual, such as a lane closure on a motorway, or unusual crossing.

We do not need to change the signal type purely because some people seem to be getting progressively more stupid / less able to admit responsibility for themselves.

What benefit would changing it bring? It isnt consistancy, because then you will have the situation of a THIRD type of red signal on the highway.

 

[Nym]

Why?

Currently there are two meanings of a red light.

1) A steady red signal which is a traffic signal normally found for road / road crossings.

2) A flashing red signal for everything else unusual, such as a lane closure on a motorway, or unusual crossing.

We do not need to change the signal type purely because some people seem to be getting progressively more stupid / less able to admit responsibility for themselves.

What benefit would changing it bring? It isnt consistancy, because then you will have the situation of a THIRD type of red signal on the highway.

There is no need to change the red light setup, it's very simple as it is, if you don't know what the lights and signals on the road network mean, you should not be driving.

I'm newly qualified into the LGV driving game, and have been driving for an agency. I can agree that i see stupid things everytime I am on the road. But I fully expect that I have been seen doing things that other drivers may see as stupid or dangerous.

I had one experience on the M6 (I forget the junction number off the top of my head) where a woman missed her junction for whatever reason (I wasnt in her car i was in my truck so can't comment on why), decided to try and cut in front of me, I promptly dropped anchor, but couldnt slow down in time, clipped the rear offside of her car and she went spinning off up the sliproad hitting another car and breaking her arm. She blamed me claiming that I was travelling in excess of 80mph!!! (in a truck that I knew and could prove was limited to 56mph). The upshot was I was arrested, for causing Actual Bodily Harm by Dangerous Driving, but let off when the Police completed a full investigation.


but seriously? Nym makes some interesting and valid contributions to the forum, and this thread has been no different and I respect his point of view even though it may differ from my own.

I would have thought that a simple inspection of your Digital Tachograph Card or Tachograph Disc would be enough to inform the police of this. Was this on the M6 in Cheshire / North Staffordshire by any chance, it seems to be massively populated by dangerous drivers there.

And thanks, nice to know someone actually appreciates the long typing rants I occationally go though.

 

[jon0844]

While I don't excuse bad drivers, there are many councils or highway departments that should be prosecuted for lousy road design.

Instead of fixing these roads in the 90s and 00s, we simply erected speed cameras and expected it to solve all of our problems. Obviously it didn't and it's only fairly recently that some people have acknowledged that some road layouts are accidents waiting to happen.

I wonder what would happen if the road designers/planners knew they could be sent to jail for building roads with accident blackspots designed in from day one? (After all, speed cameras were put in at blackspots and yet some new roads got cameras from day one - so they must have purposely designed dangerous roads/junctions!).

Some of what I say is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I still have a valid complaint. I can drive on some roads and think how easy it would be for bad drivers to completely cock up and cause carnage. However, there are ways to cater for poorer drivers and it isn't changing lights at crossings.

 

[boing_uk]

I wonder what would happen if the road designers/planners knew they could be sent to jail for building roads with accident blackspots designed in from day one? (After all, speed cameras were put in at blackspots and yet some new roads got cameras from day one - so they must have purposely designed dangerous roads/junctions!).

Beleive me I know that should I make a monumental cock up, I could very well end up winning a lengthy vacation in one of Her Majesties' holiday parks.

However because it is very unlikely to happen and there are too few penalties for local authorities who do go outside of their legislatory boundaries in terms of design and/or procedure, no-one in charge takes any notice because the risk of ramifications to either the authority or individuals are too small.

Until there is a body such as RAIB investigating injury collisions on the highway, then nothing will change. I know for an absolute fact that there are a LOT of hidden treasures out there on the highway which any local authority could be sued for, but they get away with it.

Some prime examples are skid resistance, poor asset management, poor lighting design, incorrect sign design, legal orders missing or incorrect, deferred maintenance. The list is almost endless.

The difficulty being that local authorities have to manage their asset, beg for funding, investigate accidents on their network and have no real independent organisation to tell them where they are going wrong. And all these are influenced/ignored by local political pressures which are certainly not felt as much in any other industry. Knee-jerk policy making on the back of a vociferous local minority is rife, just to keep local politicians in the game - sometimes with illegal expenditure and corruption to boot. With no independent body to investigate these things, it is a losing battle for the many competent highway engineers out there.

When elections are looming and budget cuts are being thought about by those whose livelihoods and political careers depend on votes and the choice is between school meals, elderly care and road maintenance, who is going to get their budget cut more?

Anyway, this has strayed WAY off topic.

 

[deltic1989]

There is no need to change the red light setup, it's very simple as it is, if you don't know what the lights and signals on the road network mean, you should not be driving.



I would have thought that a simple inspection of your Digital Tachograph Card or Tachograph Disc would be enough to inform the police of this. Was this on the M6 in Cheshire / North Staffordshire by any chance, it seems to be massively populated by dangerous drivers there.

And thanks, nice to know someone actually appreciates the long typing rants I occationally go though.

It was Cumbria in the general area of Carlisle. The Police accident investigators looked at the digital tacho, they eventually admitted that they had found i was travelling at 47mph at the point of impact. (after I had been locked up for 4 hours).

And, You're welcome. I find its good manners to take into account the opinions of others even if they differ from my own.

 

[Nym]

I'd have been filing a complaint about that with the police, and would have been seeking the backing of my agency for legal assistance in doing so, and if it was while i was on company time with the company I spent most of my time working for, the depot manager and fleet manager would have both been taking legal action against the police for loss of stock (Refrigerated vehicles). I didn't have a tacho card to fall back on, but they'd have been in contact with my head office (or vice versa) and been submitting the tracker logs as evidence.

By the time my company had finished with them they would have been paying over £50,000 in costs and compensation to the firm. Not to mention it would have pushed me over my driving hours, so vehicle recovery charges on top of that...

PS: I moved very expensive chilled stock around the country, if it looses refridgeration for too long it flags up to head office, my logs say so and the delivery will be refused, then stock needs to be wasted. Not to mention the rediculous amount of money it cost to employ me, compared to most 3.5tonne drivers.

PPS: My tracker showed how much I paid for my coffee at Heartshead Moor, they even knew throttle position, brake servo pressure, engine rpm, limiter cut-in, 1m accurate position and had email alerts for speeding, traffic violations and agressive driving events.

 

[jon0844]

I'm not a person that demands compensation unless I'm genuinely left out of pocket. The thought doesn't even cross my mind and all the adverts on TV really anger me as ultimately we all end up paying for people to try and get easy money.

For being held (albeit free to leave at any time) by FCC for 4 hours by an idiot RPI, I got £50 in rail vouchers from FCC as a gesture of goodwill. As I wasn't docked half a day of pay by my employer, there had been no actual financial loss to me (besides having to buy a ticket that I didn't need) so I was quite happy. I am sure if I'd gone to the Daily Mail, I could have got a lot more. What I wanted was an apology and to make sure such nonsense didn't happen again.

I am sure in this case the police were doing their job and needed time to establish the facts, as I'd hope would be the case all of the time. Sometimes this takes time.

 

[Nym]

OK, it takes 30 seconds to read a digital tachograph card, and 0 seconds to realise someone saying that an HGV doing 80mph is being stupid.

And if this had been the situation as I had discribed, there would have been significant financial loss to my company, like I said, moving stuff that needs to be cold, and delivered on time.

 

[Donny Dave]

Trouble is Nym, HGV drivers are considered scum of the earth by a lot of motorists, and when an allegation is made to the police in such circumstances, it has to be checked up on.

It's not a case of simply checking the tacho card/printout, the tacho equipment is also checked to make sure it has not been tampered with to create a false reading ....

 

[deltic1989]

It's not a case of simply checking the tacho card/printout, the tacho equipment is also checked to make sure it has not been tampered with to create a false reading ....

This is what must have taken the time. It was only my third run and i was still a bit of a novice as to how things worked with the Police, i accepted what they said, I've chalked it up to experience, and left it at that.

I'm wiser now and understand more about matters Gavva, and if the same thing were to happen again I would certainly be doing as Nym suggested.

 

[Yew]

I was on my way to lincoln this morning and saw something interesting. A crossing with a red light camera on it. Could someone explain why a £60 fine is deemed worse than death? I dont think that even a saab could do that well against 44,000 tonnes of freight train going at 70mph.....

 

[Nym]

Fortunately the only people who ever caught me being naughty was my boss when he looked at the tracker. Is fun getting a phone call in Helperby saying, "How fast where you just going on that road with a 50 limit that's arrow straight and all of our drivers do that speed on?" (I was doing 50 Gov'nr, honest)

Never had a run in with the police when driving professionally, and only once personally because some silly bitch that ran into me wouldn't provide details.

But yeah, never had a run in with police where it's been an actual problem, some of our drivers did, once had a 7.5 tonne vehicle being impouded for being suspected overweight and the weighbridge being knackered, was quite a laugh because the vehicle was half way round it's run and I signed off a 2.8 tonne load when leaving depot, and he'd dropped at least a tonne of it. Got a mobile weighbridge out and it came in totaling less than 5 tonnes... Silly ass coppers...

One look in the back would have told them it wasn't overweight, we just had an unusal suspension layout on the rear of the vehicle so it looked overwight.

 

[jon0844]

Trouble is Nym, HGV drivers are considered scum of the earth by a lot of motorists, and when an allegation is made to the police in such circumstances, it has to be checked up on.

Really? Maybe I'm old school but I generally think of lorry drivers as being the real professional drivers - like black cab drivers.

Perhaps standards have slipped, not helped by the foreign lorries, but that's still how I see HGV drivers - and to a certain extent coach drivers. Not so sure about bus drivers, and the less said about other taxis the better. For some reason, if I see the words 'Addison Lee' I read it as 'Keep Well Away From Me'

 

[Nym]

Really? Maybe I'm old school but I generally think of lorry drivers as being the real professional drivers - like black cab drivers.

Perhaps standards have slipped, not helped by the foreign lorries, but that's still how I see HGV drivers - and to a certain extent coach drivers. Not so sure about bus drivers, and the less said about other taxis the better. For some reason, if I see the words 'Addison Lee' I read it as 'Keep Well Away From Me'

I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates that comment, all the other drivers I have worked with are very aware of the dangers of their vehicle if something goes wrong, and are highly professional and very concerned about safety, I know I was, even though I sound gunho sometimes about excsessive speed and close maneuvres.

 

[Donny Dave]

Really? Maybe I'm old school but I generally think of lorry drivers as being the real professional drivers.

Don't get me wrong, because for the most part, lorry drivers are as you describe. Unfortunately, it only takes 1 or 2 bad drivers to taint the reputation of the rest, which then starts a chain reaction.

This may seem as though I'm picking on car drivers here, but in the countless thousands of miles of driving that I've done, I've seen a lot more accidents caused by car drivers than HGV drivers, and the near misses I've had caused by HGV drivers I can count on 1 finger (and that was caused by a car driver - Motorway went from 3 lanes to just 2, and there was a HGV overtaking me in the then middle lane. He was halfway past me when he swerved towards me. We both pulled in at the next services (I had to stop for a break anyway), and he explained it was a BMW driver rushing to get through). I've lost count of the near misses caused by car drivers ....

PS. Ever notice on programs like Police, Camera, Action! or Motorway Cops, they make a big deal out of accidents involving HGVs? While some of it is justified, a lot of it isn't IMO. Perhaps that's where a few misconceptions of HGV drivers spring from, and therefore the intolerance from car drivers ....

PPS. I'm not saying I'm a perfect driver either, far from it in fact! I've had my wild moments in a car (and sometimes do still have them), but the 1 thing I constantly think is "safety". IE. Is it safe to go fast here? Or can I get past this car/van/lorry safely? If either answer in no, then I hang back.

 

[jopsuk]

Accidents involving HGVs may well be lower, perhaps even on a per-vehicle-mile basis, but generally when they happen the chances are there's more likely to be fatalities and it'll be more likely that the fatalities will be other road users.

 

[90019]

Not so sure about bus drivers

ad:

 

[Nym]

ad:

I'm sure canine bus drivers are fine, just like canine van drivers

 

[YorkshireBear]

http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Collided-rail-crossing/story-15848586-detail/story.html

Claims she didnt know what flashing red lights meant...

 

[jopsuk]

Making a statement like that to the police or in court should result in a test re-sit as a minimum starting point. It is hardly rocket science. Red Light means "Stop". Flashing Red Light means "No Really, Stop or you might die".

 

[YorkshireBear]

Making a statement like that to the police or in court should result in a test re-sit as a minimum starting point.

i agree.... shes 56 for gods sake does she have no common sense?

 

[swt_passenger]

i agree.... shes 56 for gods sake does she have no common sense?

It says she's 28 - so she might only have half the common sense of a 56 yr old.

56 days is the ban length...

 

[YorkshireBear]

It says she's 28 - so she might only have half the common sense of a 56 yr old.

56 days is the ban length...

I was just testing you. *whistles innocently to ones self*

Yeah thats what happens when you try to do uni work and post on here

 

[Yew]

I was just testing you. *whistles innocently to ones self*

Yeah thats what happens when you try to do uni work and post on here

Solution: Dont do uni work

I trust she is being prosecuted for interfering with the safe operation of the railways?

 

[swt_passenger]

I trust she is being prosecuted for interfering with the safe operation of the railways?

She has been done for 'careless driving' - hence the 56 day ban being reported on...

 

[KA4C]

Solution: Dont do uni work

I trust she is being prosecuted for interfering with the safe operation of the railways?

I'd be interested to see how the CPS successfully prosecute her intent to do that, rather than her being a crap driver

 

[Donny Dave]

£375 in fines and costs plus a 56 day ban. She's got off pretty lightly in my opinion.

No points, no (extended) driving test, and luckily for her, she was convicted for careless driving, which is a lesser offence than driving without due care and attention. She could have also been convicted for "failing to comply with traffic light signals", which in my opinion, would have been an open and shut case as well.

As I say, the sitting magistrate has been very lenient, or the CPS did not provide enough evidence.

 

[jopsuk]

Or it's the usual laziness when prosecuting drivers (even where the result is fatal) that means that even serious errors of judgement go through as "carelss driving".

 

[ralphchadkirk]

I'd be interested to see how the CPS successfully prosecute her intent to do that, rather than her being a crap driver

Mens rea isn't something that is usually grasped here. You only have to see the number of people wanting attempted murder charges for things like this to realise that!


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