Train crash between Bedford and Luton

[june35]

Hope everyone is okay but it looks serious. I wonder what caused it, you don’t hear of many train crashes these days.

Depends on which ones. The St Pancreas to Bedford route is a Thameslink service on the East Coast Mainline, and it's on the slow lines with a top operating speed of 80mph, although the trains they use (Class 700) can get up to 100mph.

The fast lines go up to 125mph, and the trains that run on those lines are; LNER Class 800, Lumo Class 803, Hull Trains Class 802 and Grand Central Class 180 which all have top speeds of 125mph, although the LNER InterCity 225 can go up to 140mph.

Sorry, massive train nerd here.

The poor driver. 🥺 I hope there's no serious injuries or any more deaths.

Its actually you who sounds silly arguing and lecturing about an entirely innocuous comment. You are actually making the thread about you.

I mean we all pay the same amount whether we’re standing or sitting, which seems like a bad deal. It’s often unsafe on trains and if an emergency does happen, even if not as extreme as this, the amount of people standing would cause unnecessary injury.
surprised people are even supporting it - train companies could just do their jobs better. If a taxi company has a lot of people buying tickets they don’t just stuff them in and put people in the boot, they’d send another car for the excess passengers. Train cos should do the same.

Cars, coaches, planes all have seatbelts. Yes, crashes of trains are thankfully rare but people on the train spoke of people leaving their seats in this crash and hitting heads on presumably tables and other things. I don’t wish to discuss it out of respect for the driver, I have stated my point.

I cannot see how enforcing seatbelts would even work. The driver cannot see people and you could not easily prevent people getting on a train like a bus driver can when full. I’ve sat on a train for over 5 minutes because the door wouldn’t close due to people in the way who refused to get off. No one would ever obey a no standing rule. You would also need to double the number of trains at peak time as those trains are rammed.

You sounds, <ahem> different.

You use the word 'kindly'. Ironic 😎

Keyboard warriors. We know the type 🙄

I just read this thread and see that it's been totally taken over by silly arguments. What a shame. I'm off to find a decent thread.

Buses, trams and trains don't have seatbelts because they're designed to be mass transport. They're designed to move lots of people at either lowish speeds or in very safe ways like a train track. They stop regularly so have people moving up and down as they embark/disembark. The vehicles are lower down and longer so have a lower centre of gravity to allow this normally safe standing and moving. That doesn't stop the occasional tragic incident happening, but if seatbelts offered more advantages than disadvantages then I believe that they would become a feature of public transport.

That's not to say that public transport is always risk free. I don't support use of seatbelts on buses but it certainly does feel a bit precarious at higher speeds on the city ring roads and on the very brief stretches of motorways between cities.

Why is this disrespectful? I don't think they meant it was the train drivers fault. More someone hacked in to the signalling

Some people feel discussion about something that has lead to tragic deaths is disrespectful. I can respect their thoughts on that without having to agree. But please can we not let the thread go the same way as last night when it appeared to end up with different posters trying to police what each other could say.

The seatbelts should be fitted to all seats so people who are seated can use them if they choose. They have to take personal responsibility.

standing passengers is a whole different issue,

For anyone coming on here today, seeing all the deleted posts, and wondering what on Earth happened on this thread last night, one poster mounted a sustained and wholly unwarranted attack on other posters who happened to mention that they live locally to where this awful tragedy took place.

There's been several major studies on fitting seatbelts to trains and the conclusions reached were that they do nothing to prevent injuries or fatalities, and in some cases would make them worse. Trains are very, very different to road vehicles in the way they behave in a crash.

Modern trains are extremely solidly constructed and very safe in a crash. If you look at similar incidents to this in the past, involving older trains, there have been dozens of fatalities.

The UK rail network is also one of the safest in the world.

Yes, it's my area of expertise.

There's a lot of safety systems protecting trains now, and events like this are vanishingly rare now. It's actually the first fatal accident of this kind on a British main line this century. However, you can never completely eliminate human errors and technical failures. One or both of these things has occurred here. I won't speculate further at this point, it'll be properly investigated.

There is some respectful and (I think but am not an expert) reasonably well informed discussion on the UKtrains reddit, for those interested in the technicalities.

Hope all the injured are recovering quickly.

Is hacking technically possible? Seems much more likely to be human error or a system/mechanical failure

That's all wrong. The accident occurred on the Midland Main Line, not the East Coast Main Line. None of the trains you've mentioned operate in that area, apart from the class 700, which wasn't involved in this incident.

The collision was between a Class 360 and a Class 810, both of East Midlands Railway.

Agreed. Perhaps the confusion arose because some services on the East Coast main line also go into St Pancras.

What a bizarre take on the situation you created - and have been deleted for - last night.

Yes and given the interference of countries like Russia on our domestic operations, it's likely.

This is how the signals work
https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/signals-explained/

The modern stuff is very hackable. Especially the equipment near st pancras / London

The authorities have specifically asked that people do not speculate.

I'd bet my house on it being nothing to do with hacking.