AWS will only tell you if a signal is green or not, it gives no information as to whether or not a signal is red, yellow or double yellow and its important to know what the exact aspect is in order to take the correct action. A red signal requires decidedly different action to yellow or double yellow.
As railsigns says AWS is not a substitute for actually seeing the aspect.
Part of the nonesense that emanated from the Ladbroke Grove Inquiry were changes to the sighting of signals, such that for example an OHL wire passing momentarily across a signal aspects counts as on obscuration :roll: :roll:
In this case the sighting now has to be unobscured for the total required reading time, even though OHL equipment has been passing across signal aspects since the 1930s and there was and never has been any suggestion that anything caused an obscuration of the signal.
The outcome is to cause enormous problesm with the siting of signals, and we are almost at the point of having to put up banner repeaters up to repeat the banner repeater for the signal :roll: :roll: :roll:
This conspires to make even the most modest of signalling changes almost beyond affordibility, as when taken to its ultimate, it can mean complete relocations of signals for miles and miles. In some cases the "new" requirements strangle simple schemes on the drawing board.
This whole signal sighting farce was something that gained a life of its own through pressure and opinion by non-professionals who felt the need to be seen "doing something" and coming up with reams of Recommendations, and a Government who would not accept through media pressure that maybe, just maybe, there was little that could have been done differently.
There was no evidence to say that any equipment pasing in front of the signal made any impact whatsoever upon a Driver's ability to read, understand, interpret, and act upon the aspect displayed, yet this became something of a major issue subsequently.
For obvious reasons we will never know the causes of the accident, in the same way that we do not know the causes of the Shrewsbury or Salisbury high speed accidents.
When all other explanations fail, you have to put it down to human error, and as long as a human being is involved in any operation whether at the front end or in its design, there will always be room for human error. Unfortunately we now live in a Country where such a propiotion is tantamount to career suicide at the hands of self interested and politically motivated groups, and individuals.
Signal sighting became the scapegoat of Labroke Grove, just as working hours and testing became the scapegoats at Clapham - the tech never claimed to being tired (actually the opposite if I recall), and the wire termination would not have been found during testing, yet these two issues caused mayhem way beyond their significance, and have actually lead to the Railway being in a less safe state for decades as a result. Indeed we are still living with this inheritance, which addressed issues that were never a factor in the accident.
Refreshingly, on the Continent there is still very much an atmosphere which accepts that you can only do what you can reasonable do to prevent human error accidents and they do not go round beating themselves up about it..
I often wonder whether if the same people who involve themselves in railway accidents were to operate the same standards in aviation, that we would actually be able to board an aircraft with a
human pilot ?
Some 25 years after Manchester, survivability is still less than optimal as a result of the Industry refusing to issue smoke hoods. Yet do we hear the self-interest groups screaming about it from the rooftops ? Do we have that lady Lawyer on our screens bleating about the lack of affordable life saving measures ?
The silence is deafening.
