A train crash near Bedford, driver passed away many injured blamed on the signals failing....

[dutchguylivingintheuk]

They DO take it seriously, that's the point, in fact, if you have been around UK railways, you'll know they take safety to a quite frankly insane level (even employees moan about it some times as it can be so OTT).

That's because you think it's of an ""insane level" or that it really is compared to other rail lines. I means the often mentioned ""there are not that much rail incidents" , is true for most of western europe. But for example after and serious incident in the Netherlands years back it became clear that there where not a lot of incidents because off good working systems but despite off.

AWS, TPWS... Been around for years...

My question was or was intended to ask do they really work? i mean i don't care if they have 1, 2 or 28 systems neither how they are called but more about if they are effective in this case they clearly weren't. Without pointing fingers it would be good if they go over what is happened and find out how to potentially prevent it in the future. just like the aerospace industry does after every plane crash or incident.

Bit hasty there Dutchie. Fatal accidents in the UK railway are pretty rare. Collisions with trains, as opposed to road vehicles intruding on the line, are vanishingly rare.


The last accident involving a collision due to signalling problems was Clapham Junction; nearly 30 years ago.

Yes, as they are in most of western europe. does that mean the systems are great working 100% etc.? I think looking at every accident trying to find out what went wrong and how to improve it is a much better approach.

It's reported that the train hit from behind had stopped because of a problem with the Automatic Warning System which uses a fairly crude set up with magnets to alert the driver to signals showing anything other 'proceed' (green) and to apply the brakes if the driver doesn't acknowledge the warning.

The following train would, if the system was working as intended have seen amber and red signals to protect the Nottingham train.

Investigators are on the scene now and I suspect we'll have an interim report pretty quickly

on itself already something that can be improved, we have so many systems now that can show an alert and or visualise it, but it all requires investments that's probably the problem.

 

[Beebo]

Initial report suggests the driver missed a red light.

 

[Bromptonaut]

RAIB website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/collision-between-two-passenger-trains-near-elstow

 

[briantrumpet]

Initial report suggests the driver missed a red light.

By my reading, the onboard data on this hasn't been recovered yet (the black box is in the recovered cab), but it had passed two yellows and a red.