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When
safety is dangerous
Two weeks ago a young Woman threw herself in
front of a train as it sped through Hitchin station in the rush hour.
Within minutes, British transport police had sealed off the station. This
closed the East Coast main line in both directions between London and Edinburgh
for four hours. There was chaos at King's Cross, and ambulances and extra police
had to be called to deal with the crowds. Contrast this incident with how motorway
accidents are dealt with. Once the injured have been cared for and the crashed
vehicles removed, the priority is to get the motorway open. The reason why rail
and road deaths are treated in a totally different way defies rational analysis. A striking example is the government's commitment
to massive safety investment on the railways. The policy is in line with the
recommendations of the joint safety inquiry following the Southall and Ladbroke
Grove crashes. The inquiry recommended that the "advanced train protection
system" should be installed across the network saving, possibly, an average
of two lives a year at a cost of £2 billion - roughly 200 times more than is
spent on preventing a road death (see table below). But as the inquiry was given a
blank cheque, thanks to a promise from the deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott,
it is hardly surprising that its joint authors, Lord Cullen and John Ulf,
promptly cashed it. Their report noted: "We are not, therefore, called on
to come to any judgment on whether these safety systems satisfy a cost-benefit
analysis." In a fine example of circularity, ministers now quote the report
in support of their policies. The failure to analyse whether such
disproportionate expenditure on rail safety makes sense is only now being
questioned. The Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Transport Safety points out
that if the consequence is that rail fares go up and more journeys are made by
car, more people will be killed. Rail is a relatively safe form of travel. Since
1967 there have been 77 fatal rail crashes in which 308 people lost their lives.
On average more people die every day in road accidents than are killed in rail
crashes in a year. Despite popular myths about the effects of
privatisation, rail travel is getting safer. Research by Andrew Evans, professor
of transport safety at University college, London, shows that fatal train
accidents per billion train-kilometres have
consistently declined from 11 a year in 1967 to three a year in 2000. The case for rail-safety investment is usually defended on the ground that it reflects the concerns of voters. But when the public is asked whether a higher priority should be placed on saving lives on the railways than on the roads, the answer is an emphatic no. Even when the question is skewed to reflect the possibility of a large-scale loss of life in a rail accident, and even when the question was asked after the Hatfield and Ladbroke Grove crashes, the public still said no. Michael ]ones-Lee of the Centre for the Analysis of Safety Policy, which conducted this research, believes that current policy is driven more by the media than by public opinion. So far, few have questioned whether the cost of fitting hugely expensive rail safety systems to clapped-out old rail networks makes sense. The politicians prefer to keep their heads well down. The safety regulators are silent. The public inquiry system has bowed to ministerial whim. If the institutions are scared and the politicians frightened, no wonder the public is confused. Table - the price of life
Cost of one life saved by:
Source
DETR The
Economist, Dec 8th 2001
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