WA train lighting advocates label latest ONRSR visibility trials a ‘farce’

Campaigners demanding mandatory train lighting have been left gobsmacked after it was revealed new visibility tests commissioned by the national rail safety regulator were conducted on stationary locomotives. The revelation comes after the release last week of an independent report by the Monash Institute of Railway Technology, which assessed the effects of additional lighting on freight locomotives. The report, commissioned by the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator (ONRSR), examined the impact of flashing LED beacon lights mounted on the front and side of locomotives. More than 500 “luminance measurements” were collected in various scenarios including vegetation obscurity, simulated weather conditions and different daylight and night-time conditions. But Lara Jensen, spokeswoman for the Improve Train Lighting and Level Crossing Safety Group, said she was “deeply concerned” to read that “all measurements” were conducted while the locomotives were at a standstill. “How can they possibly hope to emulate real environmental conditions for motorists and truck drivers in a yard with a stationary train?” she said. “I don’t know anyone who has been killed by a stationary train.” Between July 2014 and December 2022, there were 7839 near hits, 322 collisions, 39 fatalities and 49 serious injuries at level crossings nationwide according to figures from the Federal Government’s National Level Crossing Safety Strategy. Ms Jensen, a Murchison pastoralist, has been calling for legally mandated train lighting standards since 2000, after her brother Christian was killed in a collision with a loaded grain train at the Yarramony Crossing near Jennacubbine in WA’s Wheatbelt. Mr Jensen’s friends Jess Broad and Hilary Smith were also killed in the crash, which happened about 6.05pm while the trio were on their way to a 21st birthday party. A 2001 investigation by then State coroner Alastair Hope found the train was “not well lit” and that the type of headlights had a focus angle “which does not provide an effective warning” to motorists in the dark. The coroner also found the State Government-owned rail freight operator involved in the triple fatality, Westrail, had known about the need for warning lights on goods trains five years before the tragedy. They were never introduced. “It would seem that Westrail does not accept that there should be any lights on the top of trains and so trains remain the most dangerous and poorly lit vehicles which motorists may encounter at night,” the 2001/02 State Coroner Annual Report stated. The ONRSR report found additional lighting provided “some enhancements” at night but recommended only that the rail industry should “consider” the use of beacon and side marker lights on locomotives. ONRSR chief executive Natalie Pelham said last week that train lighting was “not a silver bullet solution” in isolation. “It is one of a range of controls that can be used to improve safety at level crossings under certain conditions,” Dr Pelham said. “It confirms that any comprehensive approach must consider not only lighting but other visibility issues such as vegetation clearance, improved signage, and further revisions of the relevant national standard.” The report’s findings informed the draft Train Visibility at Level Crossings Code of Practice, submitted by the ONRSR to State and Federal transport ministers earlier this year. While the code — designed to help rail transport operators strengthen safety management systems — will not be legally binding, Dr Pelham insisted it will have “legal standing”. “Once approved we’ll have in place a well-considered and responsibly developed safety resource that is backed by a significant body of independent research,” she said. The investigation was the latest of three reports commissioned by the ONRSR since 2021. It’s an approach safety campaigners consider to be a stalling tactic. “Train lighting trials have been used by the rail industry for a very long time as an excuse to do nothing or simply propose yet more research,” Ms Jensen said. “The strategy at play with them is ‘exhaust the complainant and they will give up and go away’. But they are sorely mistaken.”