In January, two track workers narrowly missed being hit by a train near Weston-super-Mare. While carrying out vegetation clearance, they cut down a tree that accidentally fell on the line. They were attempting to move the tree when a 95 mph Cross Country train approached them. They moved out of the way with two seconds to spare. The incident has been in the news recently because the Rail Accident Information Branch has just issued its findings.
Sadly, this kind of story is barely news. Somewhere on the rail network, there is probably a near miss, and a track worker almost killed, every month, although statistics are hard to get hold of. In the last year, RAIB has looked into a near miss at Eccles in July 2021 and one involving two track workers at Kettering in October 2021. From internal logs and accident reports, we know there have been other near misses too.
In the aftermath of multiple track worker deaths including the double fatality at Margam in 2019, many routes have stopped workers from working on the track while trains are running (so-called red zone working). So why are near misses still happening?
In this case, it seems to come down to poor safety management by QTS, the company that had been contracted by Network Rail to clear vegetation along a 25 mile stretch of the line.
RAIB says that QTS had provided inconsistent advice on safety arrangements for felling trees close to the track. Should the line have been blocked? Should branches have been secured with ropes to keep them off the track? QTS told RAIB that its conflicting advice was meant to allow the workers on site to make decisions. But RAIB points out that QTS didn't provide an adequate tool to support supervisors to make these decisions.
It seems QTS ' approach is to push safety decisions down to the people who are working on or near the track, rather than taking responsibility for keeping its workforce safe. This echoes Network Rail's long-standing approach to safety management - an attitude that contributed to the double fatality at Margam.
QTS as a contractor seems to be at fault here. But why aren't Network Rail's safety audits picking up on poor practices among contractors? Could it be that, as long as the job gets done, Network Rail is willing to turn a blind eye?
And why is vegetation clearance being carried out by contractors anyway? This is routine work that should be resourced and managed in house. Reading between the lines, it seems that there was a backlog of devegetation work that QTS had been contracted to clear in a short time. This is Network Rail's classic pattern: cut costs, leave vacancies unfilled, allow work to build up, then contract a private company to clear the mess ASAP. This pattern generates a culture of corner cutting and skimping on safety and it will only get worse if Network Rail persists with planned job cuts.