Jump to content
 

Level crossing stupidity...


Recommended Posts

17 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

.......... So as I've already said - the costs could run out of all proportion to the alternative of accepting the limited risk ..............................

Which beggars the old question - What IS the value of a human life ? ................................... yeah, I know it depends on the human !

Link to post
Share on other sites

Are you suggesting that they put in a bridge which is probably as close as you can get to a "safe" crossing of a railway? It was a little used farm crossing, used by people who were used to crossing the line. In this one case the user would seem to have made an assumption that cost him his life. The railway was not held to blame. An unfortunate accident...

 

 

Of course the railways could always close all user-worked crossings and footpaths to make it all very safe for the few that misuse them, but I suspect the uproar that would cause would be tremendous though it would make the railways much safer...

Edited by Hobby
  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Wickham Green said:

Which beggars the old question - What IS the value of a human life ? ................................... yeah, I know it depends on the human !

 

It depends on how much money you have.  No one wants to put a value on a life, but as funds are limited you have to save as many lives as you can with what you have got. 

 

For example, say you have £10m to spend on schemes to improve safety, and two options, both costing £10m. One is likely to save 1 life, one is likely to save 10 lives. Logically you pick the latter and save 10 lives. Now are you saying that a life is worth £1m, but not £10m? Of course not, you are just trying to save as many lives as possible. And that is why a life gets a figure put on it. If it costs more than that figure to save a life, then you are better off spending it on something else and saving more lives with the same money.  So you end up seemingly putting a value on a life.

  • Agree 5
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
54 minutes ago, Titan said:

 

It depends on how much money you have.  No one wants to put a value on a life, but as funds are limited you have to save as many lives as you can with what you have got. 

 

For example, say you have £10m to spend on schemes to improve safety, and two options, both costing £10m. One is likely to save 1 life, one is likely to save 10 lives. Logically you pick the latter and save 10 lives. Now are you saying that a life is worth £1m, but not £10m? Of course not, you are just trying to save as many lives as possible. And that is why a life gets a figure put on it. If it costs more than that figure to save a life, then you are better off spending it on something else and saving more lives with the same money.  So you end up seemingly putting a value on a life.

 

I agree that as there isn't infinite money available to spend on safety you have to in some sense put a value on a human life, but I don't think it has to be directly comparative like that.

 

I believe that set values are used in justifying spending on safety, though how one comes up with a value to use I have no idea.  I have read that the value used on the railways is higher than on roads but I don't know if it's true.

 

I

 

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Coryton said:

I believe that set values are used in justifying spending on safety, though how one comes up with a value to use I have no idea.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life - includes some examples of the values used in various jurisdictions, b ut not the UK.

 

According to this report from the University of Bristol, the UK's calculation of the "Value of a Prevented Fatality" (VPF) is highly dubious.  According to the table on page 3 of that report, the UK VFP in 2016 was £1.84M - which is significantly lower than any of the numbers quoted in that Wiki article for other countries.

 

 

Edited by ejstubbs
  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
53 minutes ago, ejstubbs said:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life - includes some examples of the values used in various jurisdictions, b ut not the UK.

 

According to this report from the University of Bristol, the UK's calculation of the "Value of a Prevented Fatality" (VPF) is highly dubious.  According to the table on page 3 of that report, the UK VFP in 2016 was £1.84M - which is significantly lower than any of the numbers quoted in that Wiki article for other countries.

 

 

 

I don't know how you could come up with a non-dubious value anyway, but there has to be something.

 

 

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

The text halfway through explains that they succeeded, but the rest didn’t have such luck.  In other words, the second half depicts a number of heavy impacts, if not fatalities.

Edited by EddieB
.
  • Informative/Useful 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
8 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

There was also an incident on Croydon tramlink a few years ago when a pedestrian walked into the side of a tram!

I had a pedestrian walk into the side of a car I was driving in (very) slow traffic.

This was long before mobile phones.

  • Friendly/supportive 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Colin_McLeod said:

There were a number of fatalities of motorists in the 1980s when they drove into the side of trains that were already going over level crossings on Northern Ireland Railways

 

 

I believe that's one of the reasons many North American locomotives and railcars have Scotchlite (reflective tape) on the sides of the frame - so that they stand out in car headlights on level crossings at night. The markings are known as "conspicuity stripes". :no2:

 

 

  • Informative/Useful 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

There was also an incident on Croydon tramlink a few years ago when a pedestrian walked into the side of a tram!

There was, and he was on a mobile phone at the time. More recently there was the incident involving a young person who cycled across a foot crossing on the Wimbledon line, right in front of a tram and came off very much the worse for it. He was plugged into his headphones/earphones at the time, and despite being high on the list for a Darwin Award, it was the tramway that got censured by the RAIB.

 

Jim

  • Informative/Useful 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • RMweb Premium

Here's one from Australia. The two cars had a minor incident and got out to exchange details, with the cars left on the crossing while they did so!

 

The insurance companies, are going to have fun sorting that out!

 

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/peak-hour-chaos-after-train-slams-into-two-cars-on-pakenham-line-20190715-p5277l.html

  • Like 1
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Unfortunately, there's absolutely no way the insurance companies will pay a penny cent towards repairing the train and the infrastructure nor the replacement bus service nor towards compensating the passengers / would-be passengers for their delays nor to the train driver for whatever post-traumatic stress he might suffer !

  • Friendly/supportive 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold
3 hours ago, Wickham Green said:

Unfortunately, there's absolutely no way the insurance companies will pay a penny cent towards repairing the train and the infrastructure nor the replacement bus service nor towards compensating the passengers / would-be passengers for their delays nor to the train driver for whatever post-traumatic stress he might suffer !

So unlike BR days - where we used to make sure a Notice of Liability was sent out within three working days in respect of damage to infrastructure or rolling stock and any train delays., the invoice then followed - usually within a week but sometimes with the Notice of Liability  The best one I ever wrote was for a German symphony orchestra which arrived at Reading off an Airlink coach and delayed a West of England train for 25 minutes loading all their instruments and themselves - they were invoiced for over £200 including the admin fee and delay cost per minute at outside party rates.

 

Level crossing incidents normally meant an instant Notice of Liability but sometime the costs took a week or two to collate the whole amount as various departments could be involved, they tended to be very expensive for the motorist/their insurance company.

  • Like 11
  • Informative/Useful 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
7 hours ago, Wickham Green said:

Unfortunately, there's absolutely no way the insurance companies will pay a penny cent towards repairing the train and the infrastructure nor the replacement bus service nor towards compensating the passengers / would-be passengers for their delays nor to the train driver for whatever post-traumatic stress he might suffer !

 

So what legal change has there been, compared to the regime Mike describes? Or is the state of liability law so very different in Australia? The damage has been caused through the negligence of the car-owing parties.

Edited by Compound2632
  • Like 1
  • Agree 4
Link to post
Share on other sites

All the newspaper report tells us is the police do not think any changes under the Road Safety Act. If Australian railways have byelaws that are anything similar to ours, the railway may still have the opportunity to prosecute the drivers under those instead, potentially on the basis of obstruction of the railway. 

 

Jim

  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...