BBC News South Day - Suicides on the railways (28/1/2016)

[whole diary]

[BerkshireBugsy]

If you have access to BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) South Today there was a short article on how GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) are training their staff to deal with these incidents (and attempted incidents). I heard somewhere that there are more deaths on the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) railways due to suicides than are killed in car accidents.

Some of you who work for GWR may recognise some of the faces in the training course they filmed.

[TonyK]

Should be available on iPlayer this evening for 24 hours.

[BerkshireBugsy]

Should be available on iPlayer this evening for 24 hours.

It was on the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) news segments during breakfast this morning and at lunch so I am guessing it will be on this evening if you don't have access to iPlayer. It was fairly early in the bulletins so was deemed as fairly important

[chrisr_75]

I heard somewhere that there are more deaths on the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) railways due to suicides than are killed in car accidents.

1713 fatalities on UK roads in the last full recorded year (2013) and according to rail.co.uk, "...there were still 315 fatalities on the NR^» (Network Rail - home page) network, of which 308 were public (non-passenger) fatalities, four were passenger fatalities and three were workforce fatalities"

http://www.rail.co.uk/rail-news/2014/annual-safety-review/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-road-fatalities

[NickB]

If its not too dark a question, how do we have four passenger fatalities?  Did these occur as a direct impact (no pun intended) of being a passenger, or did they just die whilst being a passenger?

[chrisr_75]

If its not too dark a question, how do we have four passenger fatalities?  Did these occur as a direct impact (no pun intended) of being a passenger, or did they just die whilst being a passenger?

Have a read of the article from rail.co.uk, it goes in to some detail

The four passenger fatalities on the mainline network, the same as the year before, all took place on the platform-train interface - none of which were during boarding or alighting trains

It doesn't mention the exact cause, but I suspect, as it says they were not during boarding or alighting trains, I would imagine they were people falling from platforms then being hit by a passing train or some such similar accident. Details probably available on RAIB^▸ (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) site should you care to investigate further.

[Timmer]

Sky channel 964 for those outside the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) South Region. Paul Clifton is an excellent transport correspondent. I wish BBC Points West would steal him 

[TonyK]

Details probably available on RAIB^▸ (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) site should you care to investigate further.

Not yet - all are still under investigation. No report has yet been published, so far as I can see.