>FreightCorp has said today that to total cost for the Berro crash will
>be less than $15 million. It seems that the locomotives were insured
>(probably part of the lease contract) and this has contributed to the
>revision of their estimate. Also of interest is that the Department of
>Transport has commissioned the Bureau of Air Safety to investigate the
>crash. I thought this was a train not plane crash. Maybe they were low
>flying locomotives! it seems that there are three seperate
>investigations going on , one by FreightCorp because it was their train
>, one by Rail Acess because it was their track and one by the Department
>of Transport because they govern the Rail Safety Act. Talk about a waste
>of money ! Dont be surprised to hear that it cost more to find out what
>happened than to fix it.
>Bob
Whilst on the face of it ,,it may seem bizzarre in the extreme to ask BASI to
investigate the crash, I can understand the motives.
Now that we have a regime of open access on Railways in this country,its
absolutely imperative that whoever investigates the causes of rail accidents
has absolutely no conflict of interest in the function of their duties and can
come to a totally impartial decision.
Asking railways to investigate their own accidents is like asking the police
to investigate the police, you will get an outcome that totally exonorates the
Railway and usually finds that the driver was at fault.
Airline accidents all around the world are investigated by bodies totally
removed from the operation of flying planes.
In the US , Rail accidents are investigated by the FRA.
Ideally , we need some sort of body similar to the FRA in Australia,if we are
to have an open access regime.
BASI by the way are an extremely competent bunch of people,and if the accident
was caused by any sort of mechanical failure, they will find it.
cheers
MD
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Maurie Daly
Department of Communications Lab.
Canberra
Australia
mauried@commslab.gov.au
ph 6 2791331
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