What was going on tonight with the 'trespass incident' near Welwyn? I got caught up in this when trying to leave Kings Cross around 2130, but looking at RTT am rather surprised that it appeared to start around 1830 and continued until end of service, over 6 hours, which seems a remarkably long time for a trespass to be sorted out...
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Welwyn Trespass Incident (03/06)
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the sniper
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I believe it was a suicidal person.
Ah, that would explain it, hadn't thought of that.
In that case, I hope all ended well.
ChiefPlanner
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After many hours - person was on the viaduct.
The train companies do seem to shoot themselves in the foot using terms like "trespass incident". With that, everyonejust thinks the train company is incompetent for not dealing with it more swiftly.
Clearly they don't want to say "we have someone threating to jump", but I am sure there is something more informative than "trespass incident" that still maintained an appropriate tone.
Clearly they don't want to say "we have someone threating to jump", but I am sure there is something more informative than "trespass incident" that still maintained an appropriate tone.
tsr
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After some time, the public text on the GTR website was, IIRC, changed to a message about someone threatening to jump.
There are various ways of tactfully wording things, but I'd agree that the more detail as you can sensibly give about the scenario, the better.
There are various ways of tactfully wording things, but I'd agree that the more detail as you can sensibly give about the scenario, the better.
Loop & Link
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"Due to a person threatening to harm themselves on the railway?"
tsr
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Personally I'd prefer something like "due to police securing the well-being of a person who has placed themselves in a vulnerable position on a railway structure".
NSE
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Something like that would work well I think. I'm generally not an angry person with delays. But when I see 'Trespass' I instantly think of hoodies doing graffiti. Of course it isn't, as this shows, I think commuters would be less angry to read your suggestion above.
Their Twitter feed continued to talk about a "trespass incident" all night, and 20 minutes ago they were still referring to the person as the "trespasser".
There just needs to be a commonly understood phrase which when heard people will understand and refrain from asking any more.
The campaign for plain English would hate that. Why do we have to dance around the issue? Why can we not be told that someone is threatening to commit suicide? That is what the verbose version above means anyway and I believe plain speaking and writing would garner rather more understanding from the travelling public.
Rob
TimboM
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I've seen "police-led incident" used a fair bit - particularly the Highways Agency when similar situations occur on the motorways. I think this covers it well enough as you can work out its either a fatality or someone threatening suicide without too much verbosity or too many details being given as to the exact nature of a sensitive on-going matter.
As an aside, I was pulled up recently by my sister (who is a mental health professional) for using the phrase "commit" suicide. Apparently this shouldn't be used anymore as links back to the days it was a crime and has the connotation that the person doing it is somehow bad or criminal.
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"Due to police assisting a vulnerable person" would be my choice.
As an aside, I was at KX that evening and the automated announcements included "[delay, [delay], [delay], and staff are working to resolve this as quickly as possible." which was a nice touch.
As an aside, I was at KX that evening and the automated announcements included "[delay, [delay], [delay], and staff are working to resolve this as quickly as possible." which was a nice touch.
TimboM
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Sadly, there'd be too many folk out there who'd interpret this as the police assisting the vulnerable person to take their own life... :roll:
The media have voluntary guidelines on reporting suicide cases, so I wonder if the police requested certain information to be withheld?
It has the upside of making it clear that the railway (or highways agency) doesn't have a lot of choice in the matter.
TimboM
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Because "assisted suicide" is a well-known phrase/hot topic in the media and sounds somewhat similar to "assisting a vulnerable person" (i.e. who the public may assume is attempting suicide). If it was someone threatening to jump, the police would be trying to prevent, not assist... semantics I know...
...I'm more making the point that it's very tricky to put the words together for updates on these sort of incidents as something that's perfectly reasonable and clear gets twisted/jumped on by certain sections of the public and (social) media.
'Assist' has been used widely enough and for long enough before the phrase 'assisted suicide' bacame well-known that I just can't share your viewpoint on that.
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