UK
Safety Inquiry opens:
Paddington survivors demand ATP

As survivors of two of Britain's recent rail tragedies demanded that ATP be installed across the rail network The inquiry into rail safety heard that an estimated 100 passengers will be killed over the next 24 years due to similar errors that caused the Southall and Padington disasters.
The inquiry, headed jointly by Lord Cullen and Professor John Uff opened today at Methodist Central Hall, London.

Ian Burnett, QC, counsel to the Southall and Ladbroke Grove joint inquiry into train protection systems, claimed Railtrack's programme for preventing trains from passing through red lights was lagging behind schedule.

Mr Burnett told the inquiry at London's Methodist Central Hall that Railtrack's schedule for the elimination of Signals Passed at Danger (SPADs) had been "sliding" since 1995 and that progress is currently "slower than expected".

Referring to academic research into railway crashes in the UK since 1967 Mr Burnett disclosed that the frequency of SPAD-related crashes in the form that sparked disaster at Ladbroke Grove and Southall are increasing annually.

Mr Burnett told the inquiry's joint chairmen, Lord Cullen and Professor John Uff, survivors and bereaved families of the Southall and Ladbroke Grove crashes, along with their solicitors, that of the 25.7 fatal accidents that are likely to occur in the next quarter century, 18.2 of them could be prevented by the introduction of an Automatic Train Protection system (ATP).

An ATP system would also have prevented the Clapham Junction crash of 1988 and would reduce the number of deaths during the next 24 years by over 50. But Mr Burnett warned that the projected figures for SPADs, compiled by Professor Andrew Evans of University College London, could be substantially shy of the real number.

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