Six German prisoners were killed at a level crossing near
Peter- borough last March. A local solicitor has been killed there in his car in the last few days. Though the Coroner refused to accept a rider to the jury's verdict, blaming the Railway Executive for having apparently done nothing to guard the crossing since March, most people will sympathise with the jury strongly. But the incident—. the tragedy indeed—raises the whole question of level crossings. Why do they exist at all in this relatively civilised country ? Theoretically, of course, they ought to be perfectly safe, for theoreti- cally the gates always ought to be closed against road-traffic when a train is approaching. But clearly that does not always happen, and in addition motorists from time to time, for some unexplained reason, crash through the gates. But we really ought to have emerged from the level-crossing age. Questions of gradient usually make it difficult to replace a level crossing by a bridge, but there is little or no difficulty in constructing a subway to carry the road beneath it, as is already done in many places. Why not always?
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