Indeed. Some interesting information re those suffering from PTI incidents:
a) rather more females than males are involved with incidents getting on/ off trains,
b) conversely rather more males than females are involved with incidents not involving attempted boarding / disembarking.
The suggestion is that part of the reason for a) is the belief that there is greater likelihood of the incident being reported, but an important factor may be the "foot to floor" interface, since the choice of footwear style isn't gender neutral.
The suggestion for b) is the belief that males are generally less risk adverse and hence tend not to "stand behind the yellow line" and thus can become foul of loading gauge or affected by a fast through train. However another factor is the amount of "degraded mode operation" resulting from the quantity of alcohol in the bloodstream. For both sexes there is a correlation, this alarming rises late evening.
However a further risk factor seems to be being over 50 as the elderly clearly suffer a very large proportion of the getting on (and most distinctly getting off) incidents.
I regularly travel by HST; these trains have a conveniently ositioned vertical handle rail on the inside of the train along the edge of the door way and the door itself has a slightly angled rail which matches the step down from the train floor height to the platform surface. I tend to use the former; I don't remember ever having lost footing when leaving a train (except when descending vertically from the cab of a class 31 diesel as it exploded some detonators when working during engineering possession within Lord's tunnel near Marylebone- but that is a different story....) but it doesn't cost me anything in time or money and I regard the risks associated with holding it as negligible so therefore I do so. On the rare occasion taht I am carrying things in both hands (and therefore the risk I suppose rather higher) I don't- because I regard as impracticable. If the platform were bviously wet or icy, then yes I think I wouldreach out and put one bag down on the platform and then descend with the other one whilst holdng onto the rail. The thing is though I very rarely see anyone else holding the rail or even ensuring that they have a free hand pretty close to it ready to grab it at short notice- why?
Obviously there are some factors above which are within each individual's control, yet others which are unavoidable and I suggest it is those latter which should be the primary rationale for addressing the risk.
(02-01-2013, 02:26 PM)Jerry1237 Wrote: Another incident has occurred at Charing Cross. Initial notification on RAIB.
It is an interesting question that is the ALARP arguement actually supportable in law? Many of these new incidents seems to lay the blame on the industry (and the RAIB findings certainly seem to want to indicate blame is entirely within the industry rather than commenting on the continued abuse of crossings etc), supported by the families (sometime, one might suggest in support of compensation claims) where the actual blame is potentially due to misuse, ignorance of the law and so forth. The Liverpool guard must feel he has been treated most unfairly and what do the driver/dispatcher of the Charing X incident feel against the media backlash?