Letter: Railways exempt from legal passenger limits?
Tuesday 3rd August 2010, 7:01AM BST.
Letter: Ref a recent article regarding the “sardine express” and the reported comment by the transport minister that to enforce a legal limit on passengers carried by trains would be difficult to enforce.
Having been in the passenger transport industry for almost 40 years, I must point out that from the smallest private hire car and taxi to buses, coaches, ferries and aircraft, all have to abide by a legal limit on passengers carried.
Even in our private vehicles we are limited to the official seating capacity of the vehicle.
Two seated and two standing on a motorcycle not acceptable, but on a train ok. Health and safety with regard to number of passenger carried does not appear to be relevant. No seat-belts, crash helmets or air bags.
If I went out with one person over the limit of passengers authorised for the particular vehicle, my insurance is nil and void because I have not complied with the legal requirements.
There are many other legal loopholes that everyone else has to abide by but the railways do not.
Safety of the travelling public is a main feature of most of the transport industry but it appears that the rail industry is exempt from such safety regulations.
WJ Amies
Courtesy Travel
Shrewsbury
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What utter nonsense WJ Amies writes about rail safety. The whole of the rail industry is regulated by rules which have passenger safety as paramount. This is why rail is the safest form of travel in the UK bar none.
Passengers can safely, if uncomfortably, crowd into a rail coach because of its inherant safety, unlike a road coach, where sudden braking would be catastrophic.
If Mr Amies wants safety, how about a road coach that doesn’t squash flat killing the passengers when it rolls over?
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Oh really? I must have dreamed the day when a crowded trained braked heavily to avoid an obstacle, and I was thrown into a door fracturing my arm. Silly me.
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Not that long ago my wife was trying to exit a train carriage at Welshpool, all the exits were blocked with luggage,Like to see what VOSA would have to say if this occured on a coach, As you say every coach seat must have a seat belt.
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The answer to your correspondents is quite simple. How many passengers die or are injured each year on our trains? Now compare that with the road figures.
Crowded trains may not be comfortable, and I am the last person to support such overcrowding, but they are still safe, and far safer than the road alternative which was the mistaken point of the original letter.
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and what if grayligg had been a sardine can
carnage with aCAPITAL C also the number of obstacles put upon lines makes frightening reading
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Although the train was travelling at 100mph only one person died at Grayrigg, a tribute to the strength and design of railway coaches. There is absolutely no evidence that more people on the already busy train would have resulted in more deaths/injuries.
Two youths have recently been jailed for placing 45 objects on a railway line in a 4ft high pile, including concrete posts and bags of cement. The train that hit the debris at speed, remained upright and on the rails. Vandalism will always happen but I will take my chances on rail rather than road any day!
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