such as "the rush to privatise the railways in 1995".
>From their review of the Paddinton rail crash in their issue of 16.10.99
Chris Burford
London
" THE disaster at Paddington on 5 October in which more than 30 people died is by no means the first fatal collision on Britain's railways caused by a driver passing a red signal. Following two accidents ten years ago--one in Glasgow, the other at Purley in south London--an inquiry recommended installing a system called automatic train protection (ATP), which slows trains down if they pass a yellow signal and stops them at red. This recommendation was dumped in the rush to privatise the railways in 1995.
Most British trains instead rely on a technology that dates from 1906, called the automatic warning system (AWS). This sounds a bell each time a train passes a green signal or a buzzer if the signal is yellow or red. If the driver fails to cancel the buzzer, the train will be brought to a halt automatically.
The problem is that the buzzer sounds the same at a yellow signal, which gives advance warning of a red signal ahead, as it does at the red itself. Drivers on busy commuter lines get used to cancelling the buzzer as they frequently have to pass through yellow signals. Under these circumstances, itís easy to understand how a driver could miss a red signal and cancel the buzzer, thinking the train had passed through a yellow. "