Re: Xplorer collision

[G.Lambert@unsw.edu.au (Geoff Lambert)]

mauried@commslab.gov.au (Maurie Daly) wrote:

>One of the issues related to level crossing accidents that I have never been 
>able to understand is "who actually owns a level crossing", is it owned by the 
>Railway or by the Road Authority.
>Whilst the law states that vehicles must not cross a level crossing whilst the 
>bells or booms are operating or in the case of a stop sign if there is a train 
>coming,what happens if a vehicle be it a car or truck crosses a rail crossing 
>when there isnt a train coming, the car or truck stalls on the crossing and 
>the driver thru no fault of their own is unable to get the vehicle off the 
>crossing before a train comes.
>This very event happened to me some years ago on the ghan when it hit a semi 
>trailer which had stalled on a level crossing near Kulgera in north SA.
>The truck driver was unable to get the truck off the crossing before it was 
>struck by the southbound ghan.
>How does the law act in these circumstances?

This sounds like the Hixon accident in the U.K.- train hit low-loader
that had got stuck.  Many passengers killed.  Low-loader had a police
escort.  Because it was not purely a rail accident, it was one of the
few BR accidents that went to an outside investigation.  Upshot of the
investigation was that (mostly) the road users, including the police,
were to blame.  Complicated by the special laws about long/heavy
loads.  The accident set back the installation of automatic Xings in
U.K. by about 15 years.

Mostly, precendence at road/rail Xings is suposed to go to rail.  I'm
not sure about the strict legal situation with boom barriers, etc, ,
but for about 160 years the law has been quite specific about gated
crossings, in that rail always prevails.  The laws/regulations say
that gates must be closed against road traffic unless and only when
required to be opened for passage of a road vehicle.  Allowance is
made, in exceptional circumstances, for the opposite to prevail.
Where I grew up (Bacchus Marsh), quite a few of the gated and staffed
crossings were run this way..... you had to knock on the gatekeeper's
door and get them to open up for road traffic.   In PRACTICE, however,
because of the preponderance of road traffic, the exception becomes
the rule, and road nearly always does prevail at road crossings.  This
makes the legal situation a little unclear.

See any of the books by Stanley Hall, O.S.Nock or Adrian Vaughan for
some discussion of these issues and, especially, Hixon:

Hall S (1987) Danger signals. London: Ian Allan.
Hall S (1989) Danger on the line. London: Ian Allan.
Hall S (1990) Railway detectives.  150 years of the Railway
Inspectorate. London: Ian Allan.
Nock OS (1987) Historic railway disasters. London: Ian Allan & Co.
Vaughan A (1990) Obstruction Danger.  Significant British railway
accidents 1890-1986. Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens Ltd.

Geoff Lambert