London Underground Safety Given that it carried around 1 billion passengers each year, accidents on the London underground are exceptionally rare with the rate being one fatal accident for approximately every 300 million journeys. There are several safety warnings given to passengers, such as the traditional “mind the gap” announcement and the regular announcements for passengers to keep behind the yellow line. By far the largest proportion of fatalities on the network are caused by suicides. Most platforms at deep tube stations have pits beneath the track, originally constructed to aid drainage of water from the platforms, but these also help prevent death or serious injury when a passenger falls or jumps in front of a train. They also aid access to the unfortunate person stricken individual. These pits are officially called "anti-suicide pits", or more colloquially as "suicide pits" or "dead man"s trenches". Delays resulting from a person jumping or falling in front of a train as it pulls into a station are announced as an "unfortunate delay", "passenger action", "customer incident". Interestingly, The London Underground has a specialist Therapy Unit to deal with drivers" post-traumatic stress, resulting from someone jumping or falling under their train. To prevent such fatalities, the Jubilee line extension is the first line to have new platform edge doors that prevent people from falling or jumping onto the tracks and these have the added benefit of controlling station ventilation by restricting the "piston-effect" of the moving air caused by the trains. The threat of terrorism on the Underground has been a major concern because the system"s importance makes it a prime target for attacks. Many warnings and several attacks, some successful, have been made on the Underground, with the most recent being on 21 July 2005. The most recent serous attack was on just two weeks earlier on 7 Jul 2005 when three suicide bombers blew themselves up on three trains. On a more general point, levels of pollution on the Underground system have long been a cause for concern. According to recent research, inhaling fumes while travelling on the Underground for 40 minutes is the equivalent to smoking two cigarettes. Dust in the Underground tunnels is mainly iron (from the wheel–rail interface), skin cells, hair cells and clothing fibres (from passengers), and quartz silica (from brakes). The Underground"s staff safety regimen has drawn criticism. In January 2002 it was fined £225,000 for breaching worker’s safety standards. In court, the judge reprimanded the company for "sacrificing safety" to keep trains running "at all costs." Workers had been instructed to work in the dark with the power rails live, even during rainstorms. Several workers had received electric shocks as a result. |
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