I was a Transport Engineer for many years, retiring at the end of 1994. From 1962 I had some responsibility for fleet maintenance, and over the years I progressed to Chief Engineer, and Engineering Director status, on varying size fleets up to 320 coaches and buses operating local and International services.

In that time I dealt with many tragic deaths, and this has given me what may be seen as opposing views in some cases to those represented in your draft. Nevertheless they are matters of real concern by someone who has been in the position of defending a Companies reputation in such cases.

PARAGRAPH 17

  The questions are:

(a)  Who would have been responsible for the football tragedy in Sheffield? If I remember rightly the scapegoat eventually selected was a Police officer but if the ground had not been modified to the standards required by the FA who insisted barriers be erected to keep the spectators off the pitch, those at the front who were crushed could have got out onto the pitch.

(b)  Are Hospitals and Care Homes who have patients rather than customers within the ambit of the bill?

(c)  Who is responsible if there are deaths at a mass rally, or indeed on a picket line? I do not see the Trade Unions being happy with this.

(d)  If a Fire Officer made a wrong decision which resulted in deaths and a subsequent investigation considered sometime later, and with the benefit of hindsight, and of course considered in a calm atmosphere without any pressures, found he had been wrong, what would happen to him?

A glaring example of how this happens occurs every Saturday when football pundits do innumerable replays to prove a case against a referees decision. I have been under similar pressure at road accidents where someone has been trapped underneath a vehicle and the Fire Service have sought advice.

(e)  For example, it is not always the Transport operator who is at fault when a number of accidents and deaths occur. In 1970 a traffic management scheme was implemented in Stockton on Tees, part of which was to have a contra flow bus lane. This scheme resulted in a number of fatal accidents, and others with serious injuries, as pedestrians did not think to look behind them. Would the County Engineer be held responsible.

(f)  If a train driver fails to stop at a red signal, that cannot be the fault of the management, however in my experience in similar circumstances on the road there is a swift movement of TU support towards the driver in many instances on the basis that he has to be protected. In doing so the result is a great many diversions, blaming everything from vehicle condition to pressure to keep to time, the man being made to come to work when he had personal problems, anything to deflect the blame from where it should lie.

(g)  Who would be responsible for a disaster at a nuclear plant, the designers, the operator, the site engineer, or those who decided that was the system by which energy should be produced.

(h)  If a car is serviced and someone is killed later as a result of a faulty repair, should not the blame rest with the qualified man who did the work, to blame the management does not seem right.

PARAGRAPH 28 SEE 17D

PARAGRAPH 29

(a)  It is going to be difficult to determine at what level responsibility should rest, indeed in complex organisations it will be difficult to find the line of command because in fact in some companies the position changes during the day. At my last Company the position over three depots and a central workshops was that the maintenance staff came under the control of the Area manager who in every case was a traffic specialist. Most of the maintenance staff drove for an hour morning and afternoon and he dealt with all discipline except where it was of a technical nature.

The hidden problem in all of this is that regardless of who is nominally in charge of one aspect of an operation, he is generally in turn controlled by some accountant who is restricting the budget and therefore out of the firing line.

What I am inferring is that although there will be a specialist in every organisation for every aspect of their operation and he will turn out to be the person who will be held responsible but he, in many cases, will not be able to do it to his satisfaction because of other pressures.

PARAGRAPH 52

(a)  The matter of sanctions and fines is one which does concern me, if only because there can be gross unfairness. If a large company is convicted and fined it would still carry on and no doubt manage to recover that loss over the next few years. A smaller company, convicted of the same type of offence and given the same level of fine could have to close down causing hardship to it's workforce when they may not have been at fault.

  One way to balance this out would be to base the penalty on annual turnover of the entire Company. Thus the conglomerates would pay on the entire group of companies, the smaller one just on it's own.

  On the basis of personal responsibility the person should be dismissed without the usual support of pension rights etc. there are so many rolling contracts these days though that this may be extremely difficult to do, but I feel that in many cases a working man is thrown onto the street whereas the man who told him what to do gets off with a much higher payment, if indeed he is dismissed at all.

PARAGRAPH 57

(a)  When I was involved in many investigations in the past, the Police attended an accident, took the statements, measurements, and photographs and decided on the level of investigation. If there was any suspicion that the vehicle condition had contributed, then we were authorised to return the vehicle to a depot and the Department of Transport local vehicle examiner would come to check the vehicle thoroughly. I cannot recall any case where the condition of my vehicle contributed to an accident, or where the wrong decision was made by the Police. Nowadays there seems to be an absolute army of so called experts all trying to place the blame, the Police call it a crime scene, and close the road for long periods all supposedly in search of the truth, I doubt if their results are any different to those of my day, when we would all have left the scene within an hour or so. It must be worrying to people who are confident that there is no responsibility on their shoulders to see all these people, who really to justify their involvement, have to blame someone, it is almost "if the Devil don't get you Satan will". The Police should be in charge of the investigation, others should only be invited to attend for a specific reason to offer expert advice where the police feel it necessary, thus the persons under investigation would know who to speak to. It must be remembered that those who stand accused have some rights and deserve to be treated in a reasonable, courteous, and considerate manner, because anyone who vaguely feels they have some responsibility for a death is under terrible personal pressure.

  I trust that you find the above of interest, I am sorry if it seems too long but I wanted to express my views as someone who has been involved from the other side of the problem.

19 April 2005