Two major facts were excluded from most media reports on the Ladbroke Grove collision, following a train passing a signal at danger. 

    In normal railway practice, where one running line joins another, there is a set of trap points (or derailer) which diverts an errant train away from the route it would otherwise have taken.  Such trap points would be followed by a sand drag into which the train would plough and come to a very sudden but, depending on its speed, relatively safe halt.  There were no such trap points (or derailer) at the end of the line controlled by Signal 109, either because they had never been installed, or they had been removed to save the maintenance cost of such a once universal safety feature. 

    On 23rd June 1999 at Winsford, Cheshire a train on a slow line passed a red signal, ran onto a fast line and was hit in the rear by another train ^ because there were no trap points at the end of the slow line.  In this collision, just months before Ladbroke Grove, no one was killed or badly injured.

    Both at Winsford and at Ladbroke Grove, the presence of such points would have averted the collisions

    The other piece of normal railway practice missing was the way the facing points immediately beyond Signal 109 were set when 109 was at red.  Had they been reversed to take any down train passing the signal at danger onto the track to the right ^ which was also a down line ^ then no head on collision would have been possible.  As at Winsford, the worst that could have happened would have been two trains going the same way colliding.

    Another question concerns the failure of the driver of the down train to respond to three AWS^▸ (Automatic Warning System) (Automatic Warning System) alarms before accelerating past Signal 109.  The driver of the train that passed 109 at red would have heard and cancelled those three warning horns telling him the signals he was approaching were at caution or danger.  Instances of unconsciously cancelling AWS (and its decades old GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) predecessor Automatic Train Control) warnings are legion; that is why ATP^▸ (Automatic Train Protection) (Automatic Train Protection) ^ which cannot be over-ridden in the same way ^ has now been installed on most if not all trains, even preserved steam engines, running on the national network.

    As in most railway accidents, it was human errors that led to the Ladbroke Grove crash.  Whilst some of those errors occurred on the day, others were built into the system waiting to be part of it.  Even a fully automatic railway would still have been designed by humans.