Doors and Droplights

I think I was more trying to make a point about probability, after all Risk = Hazard x Probability. That's a location where the hazard is known and predictable. I don't know what the right and wrong answers are for the NYMR, but I appreciate what the main line bans on drop lights are trying to achieve. It might be very low risk that a tree loses a branch halfway through a summer's running day, but if every train at a gala has half a dozen people hanging out of windows, suddenly the probability of striking it goes way up.

My experience is that there is still a significant duty of care to anyone regardless of if you have signposted the dangers or not. During my law studies at uni, the one that really surprised me is that even if someone is trespassing, you still have a duty of care for their safety while they are on your land.

I think your second point needs to factor in the difference between the public and employees (or volunteers). All those things are hazardous, but the fact that they are encountered operationally implies you should expect to have a degree of training before you are exposed to them. You don't need to be trained to ride a train. Droplights are something fewer and fewer members of the public (If any?) are exposed to as part of their everyday life.

 

Understood, and accepted. My question is then moving towards the raw numbers - ORR seem to use fatalities per year as their metric, with injuries somehow normalised back to that. Understanding that would give a much better sense of the proportionality - or not - of proposed mitigations.

What frustrates me are assertions that "xyz is a risk" which aren't quantified, and then used as the basis for an argument that "something must be done". In the worst case, they can actually undermine safety by distracting attention from other, more pressing, concerns; more often, they just undermine the credibility ("H&S gone mad...") of sensible risk mitigation and misallocate money.

That's why I keep coming back to ORR's case at the Judicial Review, where my understanding of the judgment was that their numbers were based on operations across the national network in normal service, rather than the specific scenarios in which slam door droplight carriages are actually used. I suspect that will have a tendency to flatter the "something must be done" argument, because the denominator (mileage) will fall slow than the numerator (incidents), rendering extrapolations unreliable. Real world validation of those models is essential, and didn't appear to have been done.

 

Years ago I attended a seminar being run mainly for HSE staff, on the subject of risk communication. I don't remember much of what we were taught but I do remember one point. People's perception of a risk does indeed involve the severity of the hazardous situation and the probabilty of occurrence. But it also involves something like fifty (I forget the exact number) of other factors such as:
Whether it affects the person doing the perceiving or other people.
Whether the person at risk has some control of it (such as the risk from sticking one's head out of a train window) or not (such as the risk from radiation or toxins in the environment).
Whether the persons at risk are perceived to be especially vulnerable, such as children.

As the present kerfuffle has been caused by ORR imposing a time limit on risk control measures that are alternatives to CDL, it would be helpful if they would also come clean on what they expect to be done about the heads-out-of-windows risk, and by which parties. For heritage railways, it does seem to be down to the railways' own risk assessments and risk control measures, which for some lines can include ensuring that there is nothing close enough to a train to present a hazard. On NR does ORR care at all about vegetation? Is the heads-out-of-windows risk being used as a proxy for the opening-a-door-in-the-wrong-place risk? Will ORR require window bars, and if so need those only block heads or arms as well?

Edit: deleted a word left in by mistake.

 

I’m now more puzzled than I was about the NYMR action and what risk / regulation it is trying to address. Some greater clarity would be appreciated given the potential ramifications for others particularly drawn attention to by @Lineisclear

On the matter of NR lineside vegetation the ORR gives the appearance of not having any interest in holding them to their own clearance standards. Standards that would in most cases make it impossible for someone to be in contact with anything unless they were leaning so far out of the window as to be negligent of their own safeguards.

 

Sorry, but that’s just plain rubbish. The need to keep vegetation clear is nothing to do with the types of doors fitted.

The reductio ad absurdum of your viewpoint would be that Network Rail could allow a tree to grow up in the four foot and they would have no requirement to cut it back because it would be down to the train to somehow swat it out of the way! Presumably we’ll be designing armoured trains next …

Once you understand that it is unacceptable for a train to hit an encroaching bit of vegetation, it is inevitable that NR have a duty to cut back lineside vegetation. The only question thereafter is how far, ie what is the expected envelope around the tracks that should be clear. I’m not aware that there has been any legally mandated change or guidance in recent times that has reduced that envelope.

Tom

 

Of course you are right because I did’nt express that well! The point was not that Network Rail can give up on vegetation cut back but that without opening windows the point to which that may be necessary is not as would traditionally have been the case. As others have pointed out that seems to be borne out by evidence.

 

I'd suggest the evidence points to the contrary - that NR are creating hazards to railway staff by failing to maintain the lineside adequately, in a significantly wider zone than "heads out of windows" territory. A point borne out by RAIB investigation.

 

Re vegetation, I think we are digressing from heritage railways where the railway itself is usually responsible both for vegetation and the operating of its trains. Some of these railways can manage the risks by ensuring no vegetation / structures within a heads-width of a drop light window but on others that would effectively be impossible due to existing structures such as tunnels (NYMR think Grosmont tunnel) and thus the only way that risk can be managed would be to physically prevent the head out of window scenario. Times have moved on from when a simple warning notice would have transferred responsibility to the person with a head out of the window: but now if there were an incident then it would be the operator answering to the court.

How much easier would it be if we can zero out the risks; find a simple solution to prevent heads out of windows (unless there is zero risk from encroaching vegetation / structures / passing train with similar numpty with head out of window).

 

With respect, the point about NR is precisely relevant, because it speaks to the need for relevant mitigation to respond to risks.

I also disagree completely with you on your interpretation of managing risk. Railways have been managing the risk of heads out of windows since William Huskisson got himself killed, with varying degrees of efficacy. They've taken different views regarding the importance of that, and implemented varying levels of prevention. The proposed measures are not risk mitigation, but prevention of a particular behaviour.

If the heritage railway industry were to follow that logic given the number of incidents involving heads and windows, I would expect to see a complete ban on the general public going anywhere near a steam locomotive footplate - if indeed the public were to be allowed within boiler explosion blast radius of a steam locomotive at all. Instead, rightly, the risks are mitigated through a range of operational and engineering controls to make sure that those locomotives are safe, combined with care being taken by railway staff over how close people get to working locomotives.

My challenge is to understand the data behind this decision. Unfortunately, @Lineisclear's arguments in favour of this decision have not clarified the situation, but if anything obscured it - in particular through the lack of any answers to the increase in some risks that locking passenger doors without a failsafe mechanism for opening them in an emergency.

For clarity, though I am far from supportive of or convinced by these measures, I have been and remain open to being convinced that they are a necessary and proportionate response to the specific conditions under which the NYMR operates.

 

How much easier would it be if the individual had to take responsibility for his own actions when they are done entirely at his own accord?

 

Interestingly, HMRI took Bressingham to court over carrying members of the public on a steam locomotive footplate back in the 1970's and lost. I'm sure someone on here will know the details.

 

Totally agree and but signs saying don’t do xyz no longer appear to cut the mustard.

 

We did enjoy our day out and spend a lot of time on the railway. It was explained to us as to why they had to do it so we all sat there and didn’t put anything out of the window but some old chap at the table next to us put his head by the window to get some fresh air and was quite rudely ask to get his head away from the window and remain seated. Now it wasn’t a hot day but it was very warm on the train so all I’m thinking is how is that going to be on a very hot summers day?

 

Laverstock North Jn? Salisbury Tunnel Jn?

 

Good point. It has happened

 

Was this on the Whitby section?

 

When working on the Leeds NW Electrification scheme in the 90's one of my tasks was to plan the removal of vegetation from the lineside.
I was told that the cleared area was to be, where possible, 6 metres out from the cess rail and 6 metres up from rail level.
I think we did generally, manage to achieve this, with a few exceptions such as Ben Rhydding where we cut back as much as possible.
Other areas, such as cuttings to bridges and tunnels were cleared completely.

The problem now is to maintain that space otherwise all the effort was wasted.
On a previous electrification site on the ECML a regrowth of 23ft in one year was recorded.

 

Taking the RAIB report on Salisbury Tunnel Junction, I hesitate to say that there is a policy - that report is clear that there was a policy, but that it was not followed and there was very limited enforcement of that policy. Reading it, my impression was instead of an organisation that was failing to implement its policies consistently and effectively. Reading that and other RAIB reports (a concerning but partial window into the organisation), I infer that this is due to a mixture of insufficient frontline resources, combined with an organisational failure to convert policy decisions into consistent, effective, action on the ground. The resulting risk to life and limb can be seen especially clearly through the reports into the Carmont derailment (the management of the civil engineering work) and the deaths of track workers at Margam (a small unit very detached from corporate policy), but also in many other reports into deaths, injuries and near misses across the network.

As the Margam report lays bare, fixing that is not going to be simple, and the answers may go well beyond what additional resources will address.