Opinion: How many red flags does our government actually need before it will act?

Today marks 26 years since The West Australian published an article, “A screech, a big bang and then just silence” (July 10, 2000), following the tragic and early deaths of my youngest brother Christian Jensen and his friends Jess Broad and Hilary Smith in the dark at a notorious unlit crossing near Jennacubbine in the WA Wheatbelt on July 8, 2000.

A coronial inquest into the crash a year later found that ‘the train was not adequately lit and there was no lighting on the train designed to provide an effective warning to motor vehicle drivers at railway crossings.

As such, the coroner found the train “constituted a very serious hazard indeed” and formed the basis for his recommendations that auxiliary safety lighting (strobe/beacon lighting) be immediately installed on trains. A quarter of a century later, the rail industry still hasn’t actioned these recommendations, nor has our government legislated them.

And alarmingly, the need for beacon warning lights on trains was flagged 32 years before the Jennacubbine triple fatality following a spate of serious crashes at railway level crossings in WA in the mid-1960s when a report entitled “Railway Level Crossing Protection in WA” was released in December 1968.

These recommendations were also never actioned.

It begs the question: how many red flags does our government actually need before it will act?

What’s even more concerning is that the Monash Institute of Railway Technology’s 2024 report (the rail industry’s own research) found that train visibility improvements were approximately 790 times greater at night when additional lighting was employed on trains.

A 790-times greater improvement isn’t marginal; it’s transformational for train visibility. So, why does our government still permit the rail industry to remain stuck in the Dark Ages (literally)?

I commend Nationals WA leader Shane Love for introducing legislation to the WA Parliament to make train lighting mandatory — a united rail safety WA Liberal and National alliance priority — that will be debated in WA Parliament during National Rail Safety Week next month.

It remains to be seen if the WA Cook Government will put public safety before politics and heed almost six decades’ worth of red flags regarding inadequate train lighting in WA and lend its support to the Bill.

I live in hope.