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Standing room only? You're more likely to be hurt in train crash
By Andrew Gilligan, Evening Standard Last updated at 11:24am on 19.04.07
Computer simulation: standing passengers fly backwards, suffering serious injuries
Passengers forced to stand on London's overcrowded trains are three times more likely to suffer serious injuries in an accident than those who are seated.
Crash tests today reveal for the first time the extent of the dangers rail commuters face.
And, despite improvements to the outer shells of modern trains, their interior design is still too dangerous, the computer simulations found. Many unnecessary injuries were caused as standing passengers bounced off hard, unpadded rails, partitions and surfaces.
"The tests show that if you are sitting down, you are probably going to be all right. If you are standing up, there's a very high probability that you will be hurt," said Mike Brown, managing director of Advanced Simulation Technology, the Coventry firm which did the tests.
Advanced Simtech uses sophisticated software to model the effects of crashes. Its clients include most of Europe's leading carmakers, as well as the Crown Prosecution Service and police. The new tests will add further weight to the Evening Standard's A Seat For Every Commuter campaign, launched as TfL admitted that the number of people standing in the morning rush hour is set to almost double by 2014.
The tests - for ITV's London Programme - flatly contradict claims in 1999 by the Health and Safety Executive that standing passengers might be safer in a crash because they would hold each other up in a "cushioning effect".
Mr Brown said the train would have to be completely jammed, with passengers standing without the slightest room to move, before there would be any cushioning effect. In practice, even the busiest trains are seldom this crowded.
"We would not see a cushioning effect," he said. "Even with 12 or 15 people down a central aisle, they would all still go into free flight and would keep moving towards the rear bulkhead of the carriage. They would suffer numerous secondary impacts with other people or solid objects, and some people towards the rear of the carriage would suffer third, fourth and fifth impacts as other passengers and luggage slammed into them.
"The people standing up in the aisle would tend to have a very high rate of head injuries, in excess of the level permitted by safety regulations in a design of car. The man at the very rear of the carriage in our model would see his chest compressed by almost 60 millimetres and would suffer head injuries at almost double the level permitted in a car."
Mr Brown said that even if standing passengers did not die immediately they could be knocked unconscious or incapacitated with broken legs, leaving them unable to escape any subsequent fire or explosion. Several passengers in the 1999 Ladbroke Grove crash are believed to have died this way.
For the rail tests, software engineers spent a month building a 3-D computer model of a typical London commuter carriage, then " populating" it with a mixture of seated and standing passengers. The carriage was crashed into a solid object at the relatively low speed of 30km/h (18.6mph.) Remarkably, it is believed these tests are the first involving trains with large numbers of standing passengers.
Advanced Simtech said it had held talks with rail companies and rail safety agencies about using its software but these had not borne fruit. Bipin Patel, the company's commercial director, said: "It is frustrating for us not to be able to apply our knowledge and software in helping improve the safety in this mode of transport."
In the absence of official data about the dangersof standing, rail companies and TfL are going ahead with new carriages which will greatly reduce the number of seats and increase standing space. Metropolitan line trains due to be introduced in 2009 will, for instance, have up to 30 per cent fewer seats than current stock.
The Office of Rail Regulation said computer simulations had been used to reconstruct major rail crashes at Potters Bar, Ufton Nervet and Ladbroke Grove and research was ongoing.
The Department for Transport said: " Passenger safety is something that we and the railway industry take very seriously and improvements have and continue to be made. We have a good and improving safety record compared with the rest of Europe . Trains are designed to operate safely no matter how many passengers are on board." The London Programme will be shown on ITV at 7.30 tonight.
Reader views (6)
Train companies bosses should start considering in investing in double decker carriages with more seating, and changing the infrstructure accordingly. If they do nothing to decrease the standing passenger totals and then they should be considered directly and solely accountable in the event of any accident/injury/death to the standing passengers.
- John, London
The UK had one of the finest rail systems in the world until the ludicrous butchering of the 1960s. Many former lines, across which now sit Tescos and B&Qs, could have come in very handy as second routes to take the overloading that is now occurring. As usual, short-term government thinking, and as usual, massive expenditure to reinstate railtrack that should never have been removed. A lot of double track was reduced to single track to "save maintenance costs"; now, re-doubletracking is costing a multiple of 20 or more of what would have been the cost for simply maintaining the double track over the intervening years.
- Phil Jones, London
Standing on trains is inevitable. The seat
assenger ratio is ridiculously low, so of course it results in people standing. However, statistics like these are very unhelpful. Even IF it's more dangerous to stand, which is only common sense (like it's more dangerous to stand in an aeroplane if it crashes), what can we do about it? We all still have to go to work and pay our taxes so the train bosses can eventually, and probably, remove the seats from the trains altogether in order to generate more cash for their fat wallets.
- Jester Boy, Earl's Court
"the number of people standing in the morning rush hour is set to almost double by 2014". Some of the trains I used to catch were ALREADY at saturation point with people jammed against the doors as they squeezed in. Has anyone from TFL BEEN on a train in the rush hour recently, if ever?
- Marianne, SW France
The train companies need to take some action and start to provide more trains. We're being hearded off the road and told not to drive due to emissions and now we can't even travel safely by train. Then to top it all off they charge us a fortune for the pleasure of standing uncomfortably under a smelly mans armpit for the entire duration of our journey.
- Lucie, Surrey
I communte every day between Maidenhead and London and I'm fed up with the way we're packed onto the trains and how ignorant other passengers are as they try force themselves onto trains which are clearly too full. There need to be more trains running and commuters need to be more considerate too.
- Roy, Maidenhead
