Southall accident

The remit of the Southall Inquiry was much more limited to investigating the causes of the particular accident. In some senses the Ladbroke Grove Inquiry overshadowed the Southall Inquiry, and this was certainly a complaint of the victims of the Southall accident. This was partly because the Southall Inquiry was delayed because of l al action (see below). However, the importance of the Southall accident should not be underestimated. The inquiry is important in its own right and it is possible that Ladbroke Grove would have prompted a less extensive response had Southall not preceded it. 

The Ladbroke Grove accident prompted a more far-reaching inquiry than Southall. The terms of the inquiry for the Ladbroke Grove accident extend well beyond the specific accident, namely ... 

This section will draw, where relevant, on reports resulting from the Southall and Ladbroke Grove accidents, in particular those published before May 2000. 

The Southall Inquiry reached a similar conclusion, attributing primary blame to one of the train drivers and secondary blame to the train operating company and to Railtrack for various failures (2000 88). The whole issue of accident investigation has been subject to difficulties as there has been increasing pressure to invoke the criminal law. It seems that the public is looking for more scapegoats, looking for someone to blame and prosecute. 

The Railway Inspectorate has also been criticized for its use of risk assessment. The main criticism was an insufficient emphasis upon risk assessment procedures, for example, in its data collection and analysis and also in its approach to safety cases (HSE, 2000 t). The validity of this criticism is borne out by recent events. The Southall and Ladbroke Grove accidents demonstrate how cautiously we should approach railway statistics because of their vulnerability to major disasters. Related to this should be some caution in basing future predictions on past performance and most particularly in using this as a basis for arguing against effecting improvements. So it is important that these analyses... 

In addition to reducing performance efficiency, the employment of operators with substandard competence levels within safety-critical systems can have grave consequences. For example, a review of major accidents in the hazardous industries indicated that a lack of operator skills and/or knowledge led to the errors that contributed to the accidents analyzed (Wright et al., 2003). Wright et al. (2003) also referred to the Southall rail crash, the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, the Longford Esso Gas plant explosion, and the Hickson Welch fire as examples of incidents where staff incompetence played a part and where staff competency levels were not sufficiently tested by the organizations involved. 

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