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 and frontline staff make thousands of good decisions that keep passengers and freight moving safely across one of the busiest and most complex rail networks in the world. The challenge is that the demands being placed upon them continue to grow. Services are becoming increasingly intensive. Networks are becoming more interconnected. The volume of information available is increasing exponentially. Yet many of the tools used to support decision-making remain fragmented, isolated or dependent upon individuals joining the dots themselves.

When incidents occur, we often discover that many of the warning signs already existed.

The data was there. The information was there. The developing risk was there.

What was missing was the ability to bring that information together quickly enough, present it in a meaningful way and support earlier intervention before a situation escalated. This is where I believe the railway still has significant untapped potential.

For too long, technologies such as Traffic Management Systems, Driver Advisory Systems and predictive digital tools have often been viewed through a performance lens. The conversation tends to focus on reducing delays, improving punctuality, saving energy or increasing capacity. These are important benefits and they form a significant part of the business case. However, I would argue that they are not the most important benefits. The real value lies in creating a railway that is better able to recognise emerging risks, understand the operational context around them and provide people with the information they need to make better decisions sooner.

A signaller who can see a conflict developing before it becomes operationally significant. A controller who can understand the wider impact of a decision before disruption spreads across a route. A driver who receives information that improves situational awareness and supports safer operation. An organisation that moves from hindsight to foresight.

Those are the opportunities that should excite us most. Yet despite years of discussion, numerous successful trials, and growing evidence of what digital technology can deliver, adoption often feels frustratingly slow.

The industry continues to invest considerable effort in analysing incidents after they occur, yet appears far less comfortable embracing technologies that could help prevent some of those situations from developing in the first place.

That raises an uncomfortable question.

If we believe these technologies can improve safety, support operational decision-making and reduce risk, why are we not moving faster?

  • Is it funding?
  • Is it governance?
  • Is it organisational complexity?
  • Is it a culture that remains more comfortable with established ways of working than transformational change?
  • Or is it simply that we continue to see digital tools as optional enhancements rather than critical operational capabilities?

I don't claim to have all the answers. What I do know is that the railway of the future cannot rely solely on asking people to absorb more information, remember more detail and react more quickly to increasingly complex situations.

The answer is not replacing people with technology. The answer is equipping skilled people with better information, better insights and better decision support.

For me, that is what the digital railway should be about.

  • Not technology for technology's sake.
  • Not innovation because it sounds attractive.

But practical tools that help good people make better decisions earlier, reducing the likelihood of incidents, improving operational resilience and ultimately creating a safer railway.

  • The technology already exists.
  • The data already exists.
  • The operational challenges certainly exist.

Perhaps the question we should all be asking is not whether these solutions are ready. Perhaps it's why, as an industry, we still seem hesitant to embrace them at the pace our challenges demand.

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