Recent Railway Incidents: Overspeeding and the Question the Railway Needs to Answer
Recent events have once again reminded us that, despite all of the progress we have made as an industry, risk remains an ever-present reality on the railway. As investigations proceed, it is right that the focus remains on understanding what happened and identifying any lessons that need to be learned. But alongside that important work, I believe there is a wider conversation that the industry needs to have. For years, much of my work has centred on a simple but increasingly important challenge: How do we identify and mitigate risks before they become incidents? Whether looking at overspeeding, Driver Advisory Systems, Traffic Management systems, predictive operational tools or the wider opportunities presented by ERTMS, I have consistently found myself returning to the same conclusion. The railway is still largely built around reacting to developing situations rather than predicting them. That is not a criticism of our people. Far from it. Every day, drivers, signallers, controllers a...