LETTER: Is driver-only '˜perfectly safe'?

In your issue of December 16 you quoted Chris Grayling as saying that 'driver-only operation was '˜perfectly safe'', on the authority of the industry-funded Rail Safety and Standards Board.
By The Newsroom
Published 24th Dec 2016, 09:00 BST
Updated 29th Dec 2016, 14:57 BST

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch tells a different story. Of 14 accidents involving passengers entering or leaving trains in the last few years, 12 were on driver-only operated trains, and only two on trains with conductors in charge of the doors, and this at a time when on the network as a whole only 30 per cent of the trains were driver-only.

Not all incidents were investigated. On June 20 a passenger fell between the train and the platform, and the driver was only aware of this when alerted by other passengers. This was not reported as an accident or investigated because it ‘did not involve train movement’.

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I have asked Angie Doll about this, and the minister via MP Maria Caulfield, but I have not received any explanation of how these figures can be consistent with ‘perfectly safe’.

DAVID HITCHIN

Wilkinson Way, Seaford

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