Very little to me. Something in the region of £100M might have been just enough. That said, how do you compensate those who have lost loved ones.

Corporate Manslaughter couldn't be used in this case. In future, it should be.

Well essentially the judge was fining the public purse - without individuals in the dock what would be the point in increasing the fine substantially.

That said, the incident killed a fraction of the travelling public who die every year so to start asking questions about what price life is a little emotional in my opinion.

Regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

So the next time I'm assessing safety integrity levels, I leave the likelihood of fatalities and serious injury out of the equation?
The corporate manslaughter couldn't be used and a fine just hurts the public purse, so we do nothing?
As Professional Engineers, we have to take the onus for safety of personnel and public. So what do we do now? Start stacking shelves in Tesco?

You couldn't if you want a SIL



Well I guess the response to that is the classic "Do engineers owe a duty to the wider public"

Perhaps a read through some of the works by Professor John Uff CBE QC might be of interest

And I wouldn't go upsetting the shelf stackers at Tesco - they way things are going at the moment there might just well be a few engineers glad of that job

Regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

I don't follow. I'm not bright enough.

Ohh I think you do

OMS

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Failure is always an option

If the crash had happened 20m sooner it would have taken out EDF at metropolitan house.

There was a programme made on the crash a few years ago where a journalist got a job with railtrack on the same line and took secret footage of the state of the track. It wasnt good news. Bolts were left out and bit of points broken. All the work was done by sub contractor of a sub contractor and so on. The chain of supervision and safety got very muddy by the time it reached the people actually doing the work.
I believe they changed the guidelines after the programme limiting the amount of levels of sub contraction possible to try and keep a handle on the problem.

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Lack of planning on your part doesn't make it an emergency on mine....

Every man has to know his limitations- Dirty Harry

Maybe some of those who did such poor work should have been in the dock as well.

Regards.

Definitely. Culpability must be identified and penalties imposed. The charge of manslaughter must be used as and when necessary.

I think the mother of one of those killed had a fair point when she said that as a taxpayer she was effectively being fined for her own daughter's death. An insignificant amount per person of course, but the principle is poor.

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Andy Taylor CEng MIET

From Judge Bright's comments: "In reality...every pound of any fine will be one pound that cannot be spent on railway safety." http://www.thelawpages.com/cou...ructure-Ltd-6822-1.law

If Network Rail had put no measures in place to prevent deaths like this happening again then the situation would be very different. But hopefully anyone who has been anywhere near NR maintenance (since this incident in particular) will know that massive changes have been put in place. (I do not work for Network Rail, but I do work with their maintenance regimes, and I am far happier travelling by train now than I was in 2002.)

That is not to say that there were not individuals or organisations who some may consider more culpable in this case. However, they were not the ones in the dock.

So to answer the question: the fine means that a particular organisation was shown to have inherited responsibility from its predecessor for a series of senior organisational failings that occured 9 years ago with an almost or totally completely different senior management team.

Personally I would be far more interested in findings that show whether it is likely to happen again. Whether I would feel the same if I had lost a relative or friend in the crash is impossible to know for sure, I can only hope that I would.

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Andy Millar CEng MIET MCMI

http://www.linkedin.com/in/millarandy