Jump to content
 

Enthusiasts in Hi-Vis


James

Recommended Posts

  • RMweb Gold

Yes, with the significant decrease in slam door stock and openable windows, I can really see the high risk that this now presents.... :jester:

er yes, and significantly the nastiest things which usually came from trains were cigarette ends (very nasty down the neck of an open shirt I've been told by one who suffered), and persons flushing the lavatory when a train was not standing at a station (as they were bade to do).

 

It would be interesting to compare the reported, or even apocryphal, number of incidents involving lineside staff being hit and injured by - variously - objects, cigarette ends, and toilet effluent thrown or ejected from trains. I suspect - although I'm happy to be proved wrong - that the number of injuries which would have been prevented by wearing a safety helmet at lineside is insignificant, in fact I never heard of any. As with all PPE it only makes sense to those instructed to wear it - often at considerable personal discomfort or interference with their seeing and/or hearing real threats to their safety - when they know it has a positive benefit to their safety in the work they are doing.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

It's still possible (I presume, though I haven't tried) to eject a Coke can via a hopper window.

It might be Edwin - and it is definitely possible to throw one through the droplight in an HST door. But just what level of risk are we looking at - for example HSTs don't run through possessions or worksites where work involving nothing posing an overhead risk is going on - and I have the impression there is sometimes overkill. Earlier this year I was on a site (not NR) where I was required to wear a specified type of safety boot, hv coveralls, a hard hat, safety specs and gloves even if I wanted to walk along a railway line where the speed of trains was slower than walking pace - nothing was going to land on my head or damage my hands. On another site I was required to wear an hv jacket, safety boots and a hard hat but no safety specs yet the eyesight risk was a bad as it was on the first site because both involved coal dust but again there was no overhead risk except under a loading bunker or if a bucket loader emptied its load over me instead of into a wagon (curtains for me in both cases, helmet or not).

 

Talking to folk who have to work with these constraints it is clear that they often see no point in some of them and that immediately undermines the basic safety ethos and attitude - and that is probably more damaging to safety than not wearing a hard hat. I think that the people who write the rules for wearing of this stuff (which occasionally includes me as it happens :O ) need to consider the risk element and the work done by those exposed to it before issuing strictures which can do more harm than good. As an example just try getting between two coaches to couple everything while wearing a hard hat.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The overriding problem these days is that if you object in any way shape or form to a 'safety' procedure, paperwork or the wearing of certain PPE, then you're immediately labelled as being inherently 'unsafe' in attitude, almost as if you're some kind of thought criminal. This can lead to disciplinary procedures and quite often dismissal.

The biggest problem is that the creation and implementation of safety regulations tends be a one way street in most companies, there is no dialogue with the workforce regarding practicalities, and once something is in place there is invariably no chance whatsoever of it being altered or removed, as that would of course 'undermine' the HSE co-ordinator (or whatever he's called in your outfit).

It seems the larger the company the worse it gets, as anyone who has ever worked for an oil related company can attest.

 

Mike is absolutely correct - going OTT with safety procedures and PPE seriously erodes the attitude of the workforce to safety, and in many cases individuals become more careless because they think it's al b*ll**ks and consequently treat procedural H&S with contempt.

I've heard it said more than once that the 'damage' done in the last decade or so to the notion of workplace safety may take an entire generation to undo, certainly I know that the Health & Safety Executive despair at much of it.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

................... he was bending down and presenting his rear end to an on-coming train, which allegedly didn't see him until the last minute, due to his not having a HV posterior.... :O

 

I could recount The Tales of Paraffin Pete the Lampman and his antics at Saltley Sidings Signalbox but the Mods would probably ban me. :bye:

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

It's not just rail "spotters". It's quite normal to seen the Stobart spotters outside our yard in Hi-vis jackets...

 

The worrying part is when they have Stobart emblazoned ones, you're just waiting for them to try and sneak into the yard.

 

Just wondering if some organisations actually make this sort of product available for sale. I'm thinking of F1 clothing, certainly the purchaser of which wouldn't be encouraged to wonder about the pits. So it must be it harder for security to determine who is genuine & who isn't.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

The overriding problem these days is that if you object in any way shape or form to a 'safety' procedure, paperwork or the wearing of certain PPE, then you're immediately labelled as being inherently 'unsafe' in attitude, almost as if you're some kind of thought criminal. This can lead to disciplinary procedures and quite often dismissal.

The biggest problem is that the creation and implementation of safety regulations tends be a one way street in most companies, there is no dialogue with the workforce regarding practicalities, and once something is in place there is invariably no chance whatsoever of it being altered or removed, as that would of course 'undermine' the HSE co-ordinator (or whatever he's called in your outfit).

It seems the larger the company the worse it gets, as anyone who has ever worked for an oil related company can attest.

 

Mike is absolutely correct - going OTT with safety procedures and PPE seriously erodes the attitude of the workforce to safety, and in many cases individuals become more careless because they think it's al b*ll**ks and consequently treat procedural H&S with contempt.

I've heard it said more than once that the 'damage' done in the last decade or so to the notion of workplace safety may take an entire generation to undo, certainly I know that the Health & Safety Executive despair at much of it.

 

So what does the evidence say? Is there now more or less people getting injured in work place accidents?

 

Is that not what the goal of H&S is about?

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

The key problem is that people, both wearers and policy makers, get into the mistaken belief that this kind of clothing actually protects someone from accidents, and that is most certainly not the case! No matter how much layers of this stuff you're wearing, when you're on the track, you will be killed by a passing train! :rolleyes: And it doesn't matter if the driver sees you from a distance and manages to break to 25 mph instead of 60, 80 or 125 before hitting you, you'll die. Period... :angel:

 

Undoubtedly so, but you aren't answering my question.

Has safety actually improved since these vests started to be worn (to use but just one example)? Others include better signage & lighting and better equipment, so that workers aren't risking their backs, simply by picking it up off the ground. Remember the famous LMS poster with a large gang of men lifting a length of rail - how many of those 'did their back'? Should we return to those methods & give Plasser & Theurer the flick?

 

 

Safety in cars has improved since wearing of seat belts was made compulsory. The car could be driven just as badly into a pole or whatever, but the occupant has a much better chance of surviving if wearing a seat belt or has air bags etc. Yes the collision is best avoided, but the seat belt is there for when things go horribly wrong.

Link to post
Share on other sites

This document contains some risk profiles for rail workers relative to other occupations.

 

The Rail Regulator also publishes statistics on accidents to rail workers by year and the 2007 report notes a decrease since 2003 - however 2003 was inflated by the Tebay accident which illustrates how the numbers are probably too low for short term trends to be statistically significant.

 

What would be interesting to see, but isn't easily available as far as I know, would be some long-term accident/fatality rates to track workers going back to the 80s or 70s. At that time when the railway was approximately the same as now in terms of number and speed of trains and probably amount of on-track work going on, but it was OK to go on track with minimal training, wearing only the basic hi-vis vest and even that probably wasn't universal. Of course as well as the increase in PPE there were parallel developments such as increased planning of worksites, safety training for track workers and reductions in red zone working and it would be very difficult to attribute the (likely) reduction in casualties between these without analysing each individual incident.

 

This effect would probably make it impossible to compare with the 60s when formal safety measures for track work were largely non-existent. At that time, before mechanisation, there would have been many more people on the track but trains were in general slower and on many routes (broadly the ones that had closed by the 70s) probably much less frequent.

Link to post
Share on other sites

When Zebra Crossing were introduced, a newspaper cartoon summed them up with a bus driver jumping on his brakes and shouting to a woman who had simply stepped onto the crossing... "It isnt a bloody magic carpet!" As has been said already, there is no substitute for common sence.

 

There was also the question about men injuring their back by lifting rails in LMS days. All I can say is they weren't lilly livered triffids, they had learned the art of working in unison. It sounds corny today but they were expected to behave like grown men, to use their common sense and to look out for their fellow workers. Older experienced workers came down on young workers behaving foolishly like a ton of bricks and this was more effective than any H&S rulings! Sure accident happened but that is an innevitable fact of life.....Ask the housewife who cuts her finger while chopping carrots or the kiddie who traps his finger in a door! If Governments go around wrapping folk in cotton wool, what do they say to them when they are given a uniform and a gun and told to go fight for their country ........"Sorry old chap but shooting to kill isn't covered by the Geneva Health & Safety convention...."?

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

So what does the evidence say? Is there now more or less people getting injured in work place accidents?

Is that not what the goal of H&S is about?

Regrettably a lot of so called 'H&S' is not particularly related to safety per se but very much at ensuring all the right paperwork is lined up to minimise risk of prosecution or being sued in the event of injury. I was writing local safety policy stuff and procedures on BR in the late 1970s but what we have today is totally different from then and in many respects probably less effective for the reasons Bon Accord explained so clearly.

 

Now an example - while enroute home from hols I encountered a chap on Swansea station measuring the height of signals and talking to him he explained that a new safety edict had come forth from NR HQ about working at height and all signals had to be assessed so that revised ladder/access arrangements could be provided where their height said they should be, including cages round ladders which had been in use without any accidents or injuries for nearly 40 years. He was interested to learn that the biggest safety hazard on ladders nowadays is in fact the cages which many are sprouting - they have injured far more people than were injured in the past falling off uncaged ladders on lower height structures (such as railway signals). It seems increasingly to be all about bright ideas from the impractical litigation watchers on high and less & less about actual safety. I had a theory a long time back - still in BR days - that the more an organisation concentrated on talking about safety and knocking out procedures the less safe it became, and I still wonder if there's a lot in that.

 

As far as data is concerned I have a feeling we are looking at a big hole - the HMRI/ORR annual reports will note (and probably not entirely classify) staff fatalities but not I think injuries (which in any event were only recorded as such if they involved absence from work of 3 days or more in BR times). In addition the railway has changed vastly since even the 1970s let alone earlier years and many higher risk jobs have simply vanished while far greater protection is now given to on/near-track work by possessions than ever used to be the case (some say too much as it encourages lack of personal vigilance). In many respects I think that possibly far higher level of risk has been imported by the use of contract etc staff unfamiliar with the railway environment although equally they might not be as contemptuous of it as some old hands were.

 

Safety is at heart all about attitude and understanding of the dangers more than anything else and all the written procedures in the world cannot overcome that basic need.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Nohting new. Going back about 20 - 25 years I remember seeing adverts for Hi-Viz vests and leather drivers bags in the railway magazines.

Each to their own of course, but to me it seems a bit odd wearing a Hi-Viz just to watch a train.... You wouldn't go to watch the F1 race dressed as a meccanic complete with helmet now would you :lol:

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

Just wondering if some organisations actually make this sort of product available for sale. I'm thinking of F1 clothing, certainly the purchaser of which wouldn't be encouraged to wonder about the pits. So it must be it harder for security to determine who is genuine & who isn't.

 

Not at all - access is by ID pass, not what you wear. Access to the pit at Silverstone was by magnetic tag embedded in the pass that opened the pedestrian barriers.

 

Cheers,

Mick

Link to post
Share on other sites

Not at all - access is by ID pass, not what you wear. Access to the pit at Silverstone was by magnetic tag embedded in the pass that opened the pedestrian barriers.

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

Let's hope no one tossed their pass over the fence for their pal to use....unless you also had to use the pass to get out too, i.e. it knew whether the holder was in or out.

 

Best, Pete.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes, with the significant decrease in slam door stock and openable windows, I can really see the high risk that this now presents.... :jester:

 

Yes all there is to worry about on the Southern now is the prospect is a flying "Desiro" collector shoe.................... :O

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

Yes all there is to worry about on the Southern now is the prospect is a flying "Desiro" collector shoe.................... :O

 

I can see the next requirement of PPE - a box. (Cup in US parlance)

 

Cheers,

Mick

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

It might be Edwin - and it is definitely possible to throw one through the droplight in an HST door. But just what level of risk are we looking at - for example HSTs don't run through possessions or worksites where work involving nothing posing an overhead risk is going on - and I have the impression there is sometimes overkill. Earlier this year I was on a site (not NR) where I was required to wear a specified type of safety boot, hv coveralls, a hard hat, safety specs and gloves even if I wanted to walk along a railway line where the speed of trains was slower than walking pace - nothing was going to land on my head or damage my hands. On another site I was required to wear an hv jacket, safety boots and a hard hat but no safety specs yet the eyesight risk was a bad as it was on the first site because both involved coal dust but again there was no overhead risk except under a loading bunker or if a bucket loader emptied its load over me instead of into a wagon (curtains for me in both cases, helmet or not).

 

Talking to folk who have to work with these constraints it is clear that they often see no point in some of them and that immediately undermines the basic safety ethos and attitude - and that is probably more damaging to safety than not wearing a hard hat. I think that the people who write the rules for wearing of this stuff (which occasionally includes me as it happens :O ) need to consider the risk element and the work done by those exposed to it before issuing strictures which can do more harm than good. As an example just try getting between two coaches to couple everything while wearing a hard hat.

 

You are working from the basic premise that PPE is about protecting the person wearing it.

 

It isn't. It is to protect his/her boss from lawyers.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I have heard photographers complaining about steam loco footplates crews wearing hi-viz vests when such apparel spoils the "authentic steam master-shot", yet photographers turn up in high viz vests to photograph said trains....

 

It would be even more comical if things were reversed and footplate crews wore woolly hats... post-6680-0-11912900-1348329004.gif :whistle:

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

Regrettably a lot of so called 'H&S' is not particularly related to safety per se but very much at ensuring all the right paperwork is lined up to minimise risk of prosecution or being sued in the event of injury. I was writing local safety policy stuff and procedures on BR in the late 1970s but what we have today is totally different from then and in many respects probably less effective for the reasons Bon Accord explained so clearly.

 

Now an example - while enroute home from hols I encountered a chap on Swansea station measuring the height of signals and talking to him he explained that a new safety edict had come forth from NR HQ about working at height and all signals had to be assessed so that revised ladder/access arrangements could be provided where their height said they should be, including cages round ladders which had been in use without any accidents or injuries for nearly 40 years. He was interested to learn that the biggest safety hazard on ladders nowadays is in fact the cages which many are sprouting - they have injured far more people than were injured in the past falling off uncaged ladders on lower height structures (such as railway signals). It seems increasingly to be all about bright ideas from the impractical litigation watchers on high and less & less about actual safety. I had a theory a long time back - still in BR days - that the more an organisation concentrated on talking about safety and knocking out procedures the less safe it became, and I still wonder if there's a lot in that.

 

As far as data is concerned I have a feeling we are looking at a big hole - the HMRI/ORR annual reports will note (and probably not entirely classify) staff fatalities but not I think injuries (which in any event were only recorded as such if they involved absence from work of 3 days or more in BR times). In addition the railway has changed vastly since even the 1970s let alone earlier years and many higher risk jobs have simply vanished while far greater protection is now given to on/near-track work by possessions than ever used to be the case (some say too much as it encourages lack of personal vigilance). In many respects I think that possibly far higher level of risk has been imported by the use of contract etc staff unfamiliar with the railway environment although equally they might not be as contemptuous of it as some old hands were.

 

Safety is at heart all about attitude and understanding of the dangers more than anything else and all the written procedures in the world cannot overcome that basic need.

 

OK, but I've re-read my comments and still fail to see where I've suggested or agreed that 'excess' safety clothing & regulation is somehow, AN ALTERNATIVE TO COMMON SENSE, safety equipment is in ADDITION. Sorry for the capital letters, but you and a couple of others are putting words into my mouth. As for Dutch_Masters suggestion that putting on a Hi-Vis vest makes someone invincible against an HST. Surely if anyone working on the railway thinks anything like that, then the sooner they are removed from that work the better? Bon Accord's mention of refusing to act within the safety rules, is surely bordering on this?

 

That last line of yours, Mike, makes an enormous amount of sense to me.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

OK, but I've re-read my comments and still fail to see where I've suggested or agreed that 'excess' safety clothing & regulation is somehow, AN ALTERNATIVE TO COMMON SENSE, safety equipment is in ADDITION. Sorry for the capital letters, but you and a couple of others are putting words into my mouth. As for Dutch_Masters suggestion that putting on a Hi-Vis vest makes someone invincible against an HST. Surely if anyone working on the railway thinks anything like that, then the sooner they are removed from that work the better? Bon Accord's mention of refusing to act within the safety rules, is surely bordering on this?

 

That last line of yours, Mike, makes an enormous amount of sense to me.

 

I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth Kevin - not my intention at all if you got that impression. And alas the reality of it is with some folk that they really do believe that putting on an HV vest makes them invincible against an HST - in fact all HV gear does do is possibly let a train Driver see you before he hits you and give him time to sound a warning horn (which you might not hear so well if you're wearing a safety helmet or have one of those pretty rucksacks which has a slot to allow you to plug in your earphones to something inside it). Some of it is as daft as it sounds but it is amazing just how many folk, including some of those responsible for introducing all this stuff, ignore the simple points that were in my last line.

 

Incidentally I believe at one time the most common cause of deaths among people working on the line was the act of getting out of the way of an approaching train - straight into the path of one coming in the opposite direction.

Link to post
Share on other sites

It always struck me that wearing a hard hat where the brim cut down your peripheral vision as you looked down whilst walking along the track made wearing one more dangerous than not wearing one. I notice that some of them (hard hats)now do not have much or any of a brim to them so perhaps I am not alone in thinking this.

Link to post
Share on other sites

What would be interesting to see, but isn't easily available as far as I know, would be some long-term accident/fatality rates to track workers going back to the 80s or 70s.

 

Table A2, page 29 in this report (http://www.rssb.co.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/pdf/reports/Research/Development%20of%20the%20history%20of%20accident%20and%20fatality%20records.pdf) makes interesting reading.

 

Staff fatalities in movements accidents starts at an a average of a couple of hundred or so a year in the 1940s, and falls steadily to the current position where 3 a year is a bad year. A couple of dozen a year was typical for the 70s-80s.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

It would be even more comical if things were reversed and footplate crews wore woolly hats... post-6680-0-11912900-1348329004.gif :whistle:

 

I've seen them. On a Russ Hillier charter (several inches of snow on the ground) and again on a bitter winter day without snow. I'm not sure I got a picture (of them) to post though.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...