Safety last
AFTER HIXON HUMPHREY PALMER and REGINALD STUART
Humphrey Palmer is Lecturer in Philosophy at University College, Cardiff, and Reginald Stuart is an express engine driver. The report on the Hixon level crossing disaster was pub- lished by HMSO last week.
Railway trains are heavy, and their iron wheels skid easily, so they take, speed for speed, at least ten times as long as a car does to pull up. For example, the express which hit a giant trans- former on the Hixon crossing in January of this year weighed about 500 tons. It was doing 75 m.p.h. At that speed it would have needed warning a mile away to stop in time (Hixon Report, Cmnd. 3706, paragraph 70 and appen- dix XIV). But its driver had no warning at all until he rounded the last bend, 300 yards away. He died, with his two mates and eight of his 300 passengers.
The new 'automatic half-barrier' mechanism on the Hixon crossing was not at fault. They are not designed to stop a train. The lights do not begin warning road users to stand clear until it is too late to warn the train, for the operating treadle is positioned some 1,000 yards after an
express train's 'point of no return.' And this is not an oversight, but quite deliberate, for a mechanism linked with signals far enough away to stop the train would cost much more to install (minimum £30,000, instead of about £8,000: Report paragraphs 238, 278, 299). It would also close the gates for much longer, every time, and so would not save much of the road users' time.
For this reason the motoring organisations want more of these last-across, hit-or-run cross- ings. So (by a majority) does the Court of Inquiry, arguing that people ought not to get themselves stuck on a crossing, that roads are pretty dangerous anyway, and that the extra money would be better spent on motorways or safety belts. One assessor, and a large majority of those who wrote in to the court, favoured full signal protection, i.e. a mechanical equiva- lent of our familiar gated and keepered cross- ings. What motorists, or bus passengers, or par- ents want, no one has tried to discover; indeed, until the Hixon crash, none of them had been clearly told what the new system involved, only that the half-barriers were 'automatic' and 'commonplace on the Continent where they have proved to be safe' (British Railways leaflet P.2728 / 67).
It is, of course, unusual for a train to meet anything its own size. When a car stalls on a crossing—as at Algak irk in March this year, at Yapton on 15 April and then next day at Beck- ingham—only the car's occupants are likely to be killed. The train driver, though he has less 'bonnet' in front than he used to have, is well up above an obstacle. After a cup of tea he should be able to proceed. His passengers may be thrown about a bit as he brakes, or hit by a falling suitcase, but they are not in serious dan- ger unless the train derails. It was, therefore, natural that the Hixon inquiry was mainly con- cerned to prevent the Hixon accident happen- ing again. The time cycles of the barriers are to be lengthened a little; there are to be bigger notices, and special procedures for the biggest loads, and a little more (and more honest) pub- licity. But 'there is no way of eliminating the risk [of the stalled vehicle] completely except by full signal-integrated protection for the cross- ing' (paragraph 272), and that is rejected as too expensive and as causing too much delay.
The crossing at Leominster has twice been obstructed by a lorry big enough to hurt a train: once when a low-loader 'grounded' across the rails, and once when a brake-hose chose that moment to come adrift, and so to lock the lorry's brakes on. After describing these inci-
dents, the Report has a hair-raising dip into the future: one of our 78,500 buses and coaches could stall on a crossing; so could a petrol tanker (we have 5,000 available), producing a holocaust like an air-liner on fire. Then there are acid tankers, lorries carrying explosives, and radio-active materials. To these we may add the L-driver, who may stall anywhere, and the overloaded lorry which drops a log or an ir•.got or a sack of coal as it jolts across the lines. All these hazards are provided against by our present gated crossings (the gate actually 'sweeps' the crossing clear; it cannot be closed, and the train signalled through, if anything is cm the line). Still the Report wants to press ahead replacing these by murderous unsignalled halt-barriers, throughout the country and as fast as possible, without further research or experiment or any opportunity for the public to decide.
It has, of course, always been cheaper to run a railway without fences or gates. And in time the adjacent populace gets used to it, for natural selection operates: those who don't dodge, don't survive. But as long as the railways were private Parliament was strict. After the takeover the atmosphere began to change. The railways (alias the Government) began to call the old rules 'Victorian,' and to suggest that 'in the presence of modern technology the old gates were a creaking anachronism' (Report, paragraph 14).
So in 1957 the Government (alias the Rail- way) quietly changed the law. A little enabling clause in a private Bill gave the minister power to relax all the legal requirements for any cross- ing that he chose. This was said to be 'for ex- periment.' We have had our 'experiment,' at Nixon. Now the Railway want to go ahead and remove men, gates and signal protection from almost all the remaining crossings, without fur- ther debate on the principle involved. The Re- port, published just before Parliament rose for the holidays, encourages them to do just that.
When all the diagrams have been folded up and the slide rules put away, the final choice is a simple one. Money and time, or safety. With present mechanisms, we can't have both. If the 'experts' who arranged for the Hixon disaster have their way, the choice will be theirs, and we know which way they will choose. If we want something different, we must see that the choice is not left to them.
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