ONE PERMANENT CAUSE OF RAILWAY ACCIDENTS. TEE person killed by
the collision at the Willesden Junction on Monday was "only an engine-driver " ; a passenger was injured, but he was "only a second-class passenger," and he is "going on favourably " ; so that the company liable may not expect to be called very seriously to account. The accident is ascribed to "the culpable neglect of the pointsman," who allowed a passenger-train to pass from the main line on to a branch line where a train of Coal-waggons was standing.. The inquest has terminated this week, and it brings out the facts very clearly. The manner of the accident was explained by Mr. Bruyeres, the general superin- tendent. In front of the Kew engines there is a white board," Which is considered a sufficient distinction between the Kew and the main line trains. There is another distinction. "The Kew trams," says Mr. Bruyeres, "come so slowly to the junction that one can almost walk as fast; whereas the speed at which the main
line train came ought alone to have told the pointsman that it was not a Kew train, and ought not have been turned on to the branch." Nay, "if it had been the Kew train and coming at such speed, it would have been the pointsman's duty not to have turned it on to the Kew line." These explanations were given in the midst of an instructive conversation.
The Coroner—" Mr. Bruyeres, can you state what can be done to prevent similar accidents ? "
Mr. Bruyeres—" I cannot suggest anything. Every precaution is taken, and the fact of the white boards being in front of the Kew engines is consi- dered sufficient distinction between the Kew and main line trains."
The Coroner—" It is a fearful thing for the public that an accident of this kind should happen, and that the public should be told that nothing could be done for their protection." Mr. Bruyeres could not see what could be done unless they could make human beings not do such extraordinary things as had been done in this case. [And then he gave the explanation we have already copied.]
The Coroner—" There never was an accident in the world which was proved more clearly to hare relied upon one person."
Now this one person was "a careful, steady man," and "there had been no complaints against him." The Coroner "could not believe that he wilfully did it, for then it would amount to mur- der " ; the Jury, however, after the deliberation of half an hour, did return a verdict of "wilful murder" against the pointsman. The poor man, whom nobody can for a moment believe to have been animated by homocidal malignity, will be sent for trial, brought before a higher court, and acquitted, and there will be an end of the matter.
But after all the true reason for accidents like these lies, as we have said before, upon the very surface. In their verdict the jury recommend that "an extra man should be appointed to work the points, and that the men should be confined to that work and nothing else." They also recommend "a telegraph signal-box just opposite the points," and they censure the manager of the North London Railway for "the irregularities that mark the time of starting their Kew trains from their stations." These obser- vations throw a new light on the verdict. Here we have a poor pointsman with signals not sufficiently near at hand ; with dis- tracting duties, rendered more distracting by marked irregulari- ties; called upon to do his duty at uneertain moments, in a hurry, where even the speed of a train coming "stem on" may be its only positive distinguishing characteristic. Suddenly summoned from some other pursuit, the pointsman has to draw the distinction between a train with a white board, and another train that comes fast ; and he has to turn the points to the right or the left, on the spur of the moment. All know that in such positions the momentous nature of the service, coupled with slightness of distinction and the shortness of time, so distracts the mind of a servant, puts him in such a " flutter " with the fear of a mistake, that a mistake is rendered all the more probable. Managers of railways have never mastered Hazlitt's analysis of motives in such cases, where the too oppressive sense of an act to be avoided unconsciously begets a positive motive impelling the muscles, independently of the mind, to perform the act. This explains how it is that a man can hit a mark as often as he likes till he becomes too an Yious lest he should fail ; and then his muscles are guided by the dominant idea of failure. We remember the ease of a pointsman in Yorkshire, a fine bold fellow, who was placed at a minor station, and once in the twenty-four hours had to shunt a goods-train out of the way of a fast train with just time to per- form the evolution. The consciousness that there was no margin of time, the triviality and the mechanical nature of the action, with the sense that the slightest mistake would be not only dis- missal to himself but death to other people, so weighed on this man's mind that be became ill, and was removed for that reason. It is not every pointsman that could so distinctly explain the nature of his own mental difficulty. The whole of this class of accidents is in fact engendered by regulations which expect men to make differences almost without a distinction, and require them to decide questions of life or death by the turning of the hand to the left or the right in exactly enough time for the operation. Under such circumstances, it is not in human nature never to make a mistake ; and the only cure for this class of accidents is to allow a greater margin of time. At a place like that in question, the speed of every train ought always to be slackened, so that if a mistake should be made, it needs not necessarily be fatal.
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