It is curious how blanket news coverage accompanies fatal railway accidents but ignores far greater fatalities that occur on the roads. The accident on Saturday evening killed seven people; since then (this is Tuesday evening) an average of thirty people have been killed on the roads. Ten more will be killed tomorrow, and so on.
The remarkable safety of rail transport did not prevent the usual, knee-jerk reactions, including demands for all eight thousand level-crossings to be replaced with bridges or tunnels at a million pounds or so a throw. More moderate commentators requested only the elimination of level crossings on high speed lines. It was an "obviously sensible" view that appeared to be attracting general support.
This throws up a curious reflection. One important aspect of the accident was the small number of casualties relative to the scale of the impact. This was attributed (by an engineer contributing to a discussion on Radio 5) to the strength and solidity of the high speed trains themselves, which seems logical enough.
If that is so, however, then it follows that, if the driver of the car had stationed himself on a level crossing on a local line served by lightweight trains, the effect of the impact on the train and its passengers might well have been far worse. In other words, accidents on level crossings on local lines can have worse consequences that those on high speed lines because the trains that use then are inherently less robust. And if the accident is a freak of nature or human behaviour it is not less likely to happen in such a place. It happens where it happens.
Yet another case of the obvious being not quite what it seems.
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