Hi everybody.
Holy moly. "Occasionally stolen" master keys and poorly secured depots? This was an accident waiting to happen.
nicky9499 is one hundred percent correct in stating that this was an incident waiting to happen. Throughout time every country in the world has had its share of those who will indulge in antisocial and criminal behaviour. Therefore it is for everyone (especially commercial transport organisations) to protect themselves from these persons to the best of their abilities using the most up-to-date technology.
The simple fact that a key to this control car could be purchased on the Internet very much demonstrates lax security in this rail company’s operations. In this case the facts would speak for themselves as obviously keys were not being checked as handed in at the termination of driver and maintenance staff shifts. The foregoing would be covered under industrial “duty of care legislation” which is similar in all developed countries throughout the world.
In the above it is the duty of every employer to ensure that its operations do not endanger employees of that company or others who may be affected by the operations of that company. Therefore, bringing forward reliable and practised security conditions that ensures only qualified employees could gain access to the rail car keys would very much be covered under the above duty of care.
However, the above incident is not the first time vehicles have been taken from transport centres as in the past it has happened all too often. As someone who has worked for over 30 years in industrial safety my company was recently requested by the police and Health and Safety Executive here in the UK to investigate the security conditions at a large bus terminal where a bus had been taken on a “joyride” by a person who was later described as someone who had a severe psychiatric condition. The joyride had ended with a large number of damage vehicles including the bus and one person walking on the pavement being injured although not seriously.
On our investigation of the bus depot even after the incident, we found keys being left in the ignition of vehicles when parked at the depot and drivers and maintenance staff regularly going off shift with vehicle keys in their pockets. When the above case came to court a restriction order was placed on the person who had taken the bus, but more importantly the court recommended that action also should be taken against the bus company for its failures under the UK health and safety at work legislation (duty of care section)
Fortunately, traditional barrel lock keys are now rapidly becoming a thing of the past in commercial transport. Most companies are now equipping vehicles with digital ignition systems which are quickly reprogrammed from a control centre each time a different driver or maintenance person takes over the vehicle.
In the case of the train being taken for a joyride of course the offenders should be punished in the harshest terms. However, the book should also be thrown at the train operating company for their ineptitude and lax security in the above case and heads should most definitely roll.
Of course in postings in this thread we have the usual “rail companies can do no wrong” brigade. However rail companies are no different to any other company when it comes to industrial safety and must abide by the legislation that surrounds their sector, to which in this case the company so lamentably proved themselves inadequate.
Bill