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NATIONALISATION AND SAFETY
As Cliff Perry suggests, it is right to look at rail safety and nationalisation (‘Forum’, last month), but his suggestion of ‘nationalisation = more deaths’ is simplistic and suspect. Doubtless it won’t be long before his arguments are misquoted by ‘free market’ thinktanks and technically ignorant journalists, so it’s important to get things right.
The Rail Standards and Safety Board report Mr Perry refers to shows in Chart 7 a welcome long-term decline in fatal UK rail accidents going back well before privatisation. However, I suggest they owe more to the withdrawal of compartment stock (vulnerable in a Clapham-type accident) and now near-universal central door locking, preventing falls from a moving train. Do they also owe something to improvements in medical treatment? I doubt if privatisation comes into it.
I don’t have access to the 2011 University of Berlin report, but the RSSB report for 2017-18 shows in Chart 17 a long low tail for fatal accidents, with France, Germany and the UK among the lowest in Europe. Lowest was Ireland, which as far as I know remains nationalised! Death rates in eastern Europe remain shockingly high. What is important here is the RSSB comment that single multi-fatality accidents can have a significant effect. Has that been a factor here?<…
