After the fatal head-on crash in belgium on 27th march, it was reported that Signals Passed At Danger, rose from 29 in 1995 to 46 in 1999 With modern technology, I would have expected the numbers to go down instead of up!
Alan, You have brought up a topic that i feel qualified to comment. There are numerous reason for SPADS. Unless the system has TWPS or ATP or cab signalling installed there will always be a risk of SPAD especially due to human error. Modern technology has improved the sighting of signals with the introduction of LED signals and long life lamps. What I have found is driver inexperience can be a contributing factor as well as the original placement of a signal. To install ATP (automatic train protection) costs huge amounts of dollars as it requires all rollingstock to be modified as well as signalling Infrastructure. There is only so much money to go around and with increasing pressure on rail efficiency it can be difficult to justify billions of dollars to the accountants I look forward to comments
Alan, Being an Driver Instructor (Inspector) with Thameslink, I Feel that I have a little to add to this topic. I agree that driver inexperience can be one of the reasons for SPADS, but there are a quite a number of reasons for SPADS. One of the major problems we found was driving technique, how they approached a red signal. For the last couple of years we have been trying to instill a discipline to all of our drivers, regardless of experience, on their method of approaching signals at danger. Now unlike a lot of other TOC [Train operating companies), a driver working a train from Brighton, through London to Bedford, will probably encounter a much higher number of restrictive signals compared say to a driver with Virgin to Scotland, or a GNER driver to Newcastle. The discipline that we have instilled in our drivers must be getting us somewhere since we have reduced the number of SPADs at my depot from and average of 5 p.a. to ZERO over the last 14 months. There are many, many reasons why we do have SPADs, and we could spend hours talking about it here. However I agree it is a major problem, and ALL train operators should get together and discuss their problems and how they tackle them, and see if we can get rid of SPADs completely.
