REGULATION OF SAFETY STANDARDS AND EFFECTIVENESS OF REGULATORY BODIES FOR PASSENGER RAIL AND PRIVATE CAR
3.2 Rail Safety Standards
3.3 Road Safety Standards
3.4 Effectiveness of Safety Regulation Contrasting
Road with Rail
3.5 Conclusions
3.6 Recommendations
(3.1) Introduction
Safety is often assumed to be absolute – one injury or death is assumed one too many. Although I would agree with this assertion, life is a risk – everything we do there is danger, and trying to eliminate risks would bring life to a standstill. If we were to ban all foods where there were a risk of food poisoning we would all starve. Therefore we have to accept that there is risk in all human activity, define the acceptable level of safety for the activity concerned and find the balance of legislative and self regulation to achieve the optimum safety standard targets.
Transport is a naturally fail-dangerous environment – if a vehicle’s
brakes fail it cannot be controlled and is likely to crash. Accidents can
be divided into three broad groups (i) human error, (ii) technical fault,
(iii) external cause. I will concentrate on passenger rail and road (specifically
the private car). The main regulatory bodies for rail are company strategic
safety departments and the Railway Inspectorate of the Health and Safety
Executive. The main regulatory bodies for road car safety are the Driving
Standards Agency, Police and Vehicle Inspectorate.
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(3.2) Rail Safety Standards
Passenger rail companies will set their own safety standards – irrespective of any legislation that may affect them – as, in addition to the moral requirement not to kill or maim people, if the safety record is perceived as poor the loss of business may destroy the company. All railway companies have a Strategic Safety organisation to comply with legal safety requirements that were used to obtain the necessary licenses to run trains and use rail facilities and set company safety standards e.g. (Objective 1: Customer safety performance no worse than 1 fatality in 50 million customer journeys), (Objective 2: Employee & Contractors safety performance no worse than 1 fatality per 10,000 and 1 major injury per 500 persons per year).1
Having devised these corporate objectives everyone in the railway companies would agree with the quote that “one injury or death is one too many” and so Strategic Safety will investigate every major incident thoroughly to establish its cause, learn lessons and prevent recurrence. Minor incident investigation is delegated to local management, but every incident is analysed by Strategic Safety to establish patterns and find ways of improving safety. A report is produced every month containing details of investigation into every incident and accident, also statistics so that everyone can learn and contribute to the improvement of safety. There are Health and Safety Representatives elected from among the staff to provide a formal channel for safety concerns to be raised and discussed with management; however, safety is everyone’s responsibility and is so important that formal procedures are frequently by-passed.
A major prerequisite of safety is training. People need to be effectively trained, and to retain knowledge, to enable the safe operation of the railway. Railtrack Safety and Standards Directorate produces a Rulebook for all safety critical railway staff. Staff are trained how to fulfil their specific role to rigorous standards as laid down in the Rule Book and accompanying instructions (Sectional Appendix, and various other publications too numerous to mention here). At two-year intervals all safety critical staff and contractors are examined to ensure they have retained their knowledge to fulfil the requirements of their job safely and deal with any incident. The rules are heavily influenced by – or sometimes specified by - parliamentary legislation. These rules are designed to provide consistent high standards of safety throughout the industry.
To supplement the internal safety audits of the rail companies, the Railway
Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive will also audit the safety
of all railway practices often making use of unannounced inspections to
ensure that all players in the railway industry are meeting the terms of
the safety case they had to provide to get their license to use or operate
rail facilities as laid down in the Railways Act of 1994. The Railways Inspectorate
will also investigate major incidents, setting up inquiries into the most
serious. They will recommend or insist on changes to working practices and
the Rule Book, and in the most extreme cases will recommend changes in legislation.
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(3.3) Road Safety Standards
Road safety is partly promoted through legislation, covering both vehicle condition (mostly Road traffic Act 1972 and Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986), and driving standards (many different Acts and Regulations). There is also the Highway Code which in addition to specifying the legal requirements, provides many rules of the road for safe courteous driving which are considered advisory, but if contravened could be used to build a prosecution of careless or dangerous driving. The Highway Code can be regarded as the road driver’s counterpart of the railway Rule Book.
To ensure vehicles are roadworthy they have to pass an MOT test every year once over the prescribed age. The Vehicle Inspectorate is responsible for ensuring vehicle standards and administers the MOT vehicle testing scheme to ensure vehicles are safe and also meet increasingly stringent environmental standards. Vehicles may also be spot checked at random by police or other authorised persons to ensure they are roadworthy and to advise the driver if a fault has arisen since the last MOT that needs to be corrected. The random check may be used to initiate prosecution if at the discretion of the inspecting officer the fault is serious and the driver should have checked and corrected it before starting the journey. The Vehicle Inspectorate also investigates serious accidents - checking vehicles for defects – and oversees vehicle recall campaigns.
The Driving Standards Agency is the national driver testing authority in Britain supervising professional driving instruction and testing. For the purpose of having safe driving standards every driver must pass a driving test to obtain a license to drive vehicles without supervision. This tests the competency of the driver to handle a vehicle in different situations and there is a theory test to check knowledge of the rules of the road and situations that may arise. A driver must also be medically fit to drive but excepting a rudimentary eye sight test with the driving test a driver is presumed responsible enough to report any health condition that may affect driving to the licensing authority or to not drive if they feel unsafe – a doctor may advise not to drive.
To ensure safe driving, police and traffic wardens (and in certain circumstances
traffic cameras) will observe contravention of driving laws and either,
advise, apply a fixed penalty, or report for prosecution.
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(3.4) Effectiveness of Safety Regulation Contrasting Road with Rail
The training and re-examining every two years of rail safety critical staff is very rigorous, ensuring the highest standards of safety. This is backed up by continuous assessment of staff while working, with any deviation from the highest standards immediately addressed. If this is serious, or if it is not corrected, the member of staff concerned is relieved from safety critical work immediately. The effectiveness of this self-regulation is proved by the extremely low incidence of safety performance indicators being activated e.g. signals passed at danger or actual accident rates.
If any pattern of accidents occurred which the rail companies failed to address the Railway Inspectorate would soon investigate and make recommendations, order changes in working practices or even withdraw licenses and instigate legal proceedings.
After inquiries, recommendations may be made to improve safety that are highly desirable but extremely expensive and not necessarily economically viable. For example the Hidden recommendation after the Clapham Junction train disaster that Automatic Train Protection should be installed throughout Britain’s rail network would virtually eliminate accidents due to drivers not reacting correctly to signals or speed restrictions. However, this is so expensive that it would either have to be funded out of public resources or the increased costs would make railways uncompetitive compared with other modes.
An imbalance in the competitive position of road and rail is highlighted here. The Government road target of 2,500 deaths and 30,000 major injuries per annum2 translates approximately to 146million passenger and 12million passenger miles per serious injury. In other words 5 times more deaths and 6 times more major injuries for road over rail are considered acceptable.
Road transport has far lower safety targets than rail, yet to meet its target would have required a 33% improvement by the start of this century. The question has to be asked why such low targets for road? Why are these targets not being met? Very few road accidents are caused by vehicle fault, implying that the Vehicle Inspectorate is broadly meeting its obligations. A proportion has as a contribution poor road design and layout, which is the responsibility of the driver to drive according to the conditions of the road. The major cause of road accidents by far is human error – even where other causes have contributed to the accident. Why is this?
The rules of the road are clearly set out in the Highway Code and its related statutory legislation. Every road system has its faults – speed limits may be set too high and overtaking allowed in places which lack visibility – but the Highway Code clearly states “Never drive so fast that you cannot stop well within the distance you can see to be clear” and “Do not overtake unless you are sure you can do so without danger to others or to yourself.” There are other rules, covering virtually all circumstances.
Since the rules for safe driving are clearly set out, the main reason why so many accidents occur must be that drivers are breaking the rules. A lack of enforcement of the rules, with insufficient penalties when caught, may contribute to this situation.
On passing the driving test a driver is judged competent to handle the vehicle and to have comprehensive knowledge of legislation and the Highway Code. Breaking the rules of the road will therefore fall into two categories (i) deliberately flouting, (ii) forgetting the rules. That many people forget the rules can clearly be observed – one obvious example being roundabouts where not only is there a large absence of indicator use, but even where indicators are used a significant proportion of drivers indicate incorrectly. Deliberate breaking of the rules is also very widespread, for example even where reminded by speed limit signs many drivers still drive too fast. Casual observation reveals very widespread disregard of the rules of the road, from illegal parking to excessive speed, and it is therefore clear that the Driving Standards Agency and Police are ineffective in enforcing safety rules and laws of the road – as borne out by the excessive accident rate compared with other modes of transport and the results of investigations into accidents.
To assist enforcement of the laws of the road, cameras are used to catch speeders and people passing red traffic lights. Although fines collected may be used for financing these cameras they are still not self sufficient and therefore there is not comprehensive coverage of the road network. Where cameras are known to exist there is a significant local reduction of offending and a consequent improvement in road safety. 2
This implies that if people know they are going to be caught they are more
likely to obey the law. If there is only a small chance of being caught, drivers
will take a risk. Drivers who break the law, if asked about the risk, will
not even mention the risk of injury or death. Most drivers genuinely believe
the drive safely, so the risk they will assess is that of being caught –
having to pay a fine and getting some penalty points. Driving behaviour is
unlikely to be altered until the threat is that the next time the offender
is caught will lead to a driving ban. The general view (except amongst
the least well off) is that a fine is little more than an extra cost of
driving or an extra tax, and that as they are caught so infrequently, the
fine divided by the number of offences committed is negligible.
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(3.5) Conclusions
To conclude, railway safety policy contains very tough targets that are currently being met. There is effective control of all aspects of safety through internal rail company Strategic Safety departments that rigorously enforce the safety culture and rules throughout the industry. To ensure that rail companies continue to strive for high safety standards the Railway Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive audits each railway company’s compliance with its safety cases and will also investigate any major incidents.
The Vehicle Inspectorate administers the MOT system of ensuring that road vehicles are safe – a system that is generally effective. The Driving Standards Agency is responsible for the instruction and testing of new drivers, and the police are responsible for ensuring the laws of the road are upheld. However, this system is not effective as revealed by the overwhelming proportion of road accidents where driver error is either the main cause or a significant contributory factor.
This imbalance also means that railways have much higher safety related
costs than road e.g. on-going training and repeated examination of safety-critical
staff in railway rules. This is in stark contrast to road vehicle drivers
who, having passed their driving test, have no further examination to ensure
they have retained their competence to drive. Road vehicle drivers get
away with murder (or more literally attempted involuntary murder). They
may break the laws of the road continually – only occasionally getting
caught with a minor fine and some penalty points. Rail staff breaking the
rules would be sent for retraining, and repeat offences would lead to
dismissal and a ban from ever working trains again.
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(3.6) Recommendations
Despite the excellent rail safety record there is no room for complacency regarding rail safety, indeed the recent high profile accidents will inevitably mean safety standards will be tightened even further, widening the gap between rail and road safety. There will always be an ongoing need for continual reviews and evaluation of safety procedure. Technology is available to prevent trains speeding and passing signals at danger, and steps must be taken to implement this. However, the cost involved if passed on to the customer is likely to drive people onto the roads – killing many more people – therefore targets for road safety must be brought into line with rail targets; and investment in road safety must immediately be brought up to the same levels recommended for rail.
The major improvements in the road driver standards which would be required to be implemented immediately in order to bring safety standards in line with rail are: -
Ø Re-testing of drivers every two years.
Ø Much tougher penalties for contravention of the road traffic law including an automatic driving ban for any second offence, automatic minimum one-year ban for any third offence and automatic life ban for any fourth offence.
Ø Driving offences to be treated as criminal offences equated with attempted murder to reflect the potential consequence of bad driver behaviour.
Ø Any driver banned required to pass a driving examination to get a licence restored.
Ø Costs must be awarded against offenders who must pay full costs of their prosecution to cover policing, traffic cameras, court costs and all other law enforcement so that this is self financing and not a burden on law abiding drivers.
The competitive balance between modes must not allow to be distorted by
having widely differing safety standards for different modes. Therefore
if expensive technological safety systems are required for rail then similar
technology must be invested on the roads to prevent speeding, vehicles
getting too close or passing traffic lights at danger etc.
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