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 ByÌýRoger Harrabin
A new report says train passengers won't feel totally safe until rail bosses show they are fully competent to run the network.
The authors of the report for the Rail Safety and Standards Board say train managers are working under a false assumption that ever-increasing investment in safety gadgets will satisfy the public.
They say people want to feel confident in management competence. But they might prefer to see taxpayers' money invested in road safety where a life can be saved for one hundredth of the cost of a life that will be saved by the new train safety system TPWS.
The main author, risk consultant Tony Taig, says the rail industry should ask the public how taxpayers’ money should be spent on transport safety.
The authors believe the media has hyped train crashes so most people think trains are riskier than they really are. They are urging rail bosses to inform the public about the true likelihood of being involved in a crash on a train.
They point out that the incidence of fatal train crashes has been going down steadily from 8.8 a year in the 1940s (see chart) to 1 a year so far this century. Contrary to popular opinion, they say, fewer people have died in the 9 years since rail privatisation (97) compared with the nine years before privatisation (127).
The authors say that if the public are engaged in a rational debate, most accept a trade-off between safety and cost. Rail travellers approached by the Today Programme at Hampstead Heath station in London were shocked to hear that the £10 million cost of preventing a fatality through the TPWS system will be funded by taxpayers. (This was the cheaper safety system on offer to the rail industry.)
The report says train bosses have an ethical duty to inform people about their safety decisions, in order to be confident that their policies will be supported by the public.
This is the approach, the authors say, that has been adopted by the health body NICE that decides which drugs should be publicly funded, and by the Food Standards Agency.
They believe that if consulted, most people would prefer to spend public money on making the roads safer for children. They say local authorities claim a life can be saved with £100,000 invested in traffic calming measures like road humps, road narrowing or safety cameras. This is much less than the notional value of £1.14 million that the government puts on the value of a life lost on the roads. But councils complain that although the government has increased the amount of cash available for capital spending on road safety projects, councils do not have the staff available to spend the money in accordance with people’s wishes.
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