Memorandum from the Parliamentary Advisory
Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) (TS 16)
1. The Parliamentary Advisory Council for
Transport Safety (PACTS) is a registered charity and an associate
Parliamentary Group. Its charitable objective is, "To promote
transport safety legislation to protect human life". Its
aim is to advise and inform members of the Houses of Parliament
on air, rail and road safety issues. PACTS brings together safety
professionals and legislators to identify research-based solutions
to transport safety problems having regard to cost, effectiveness,
achievability and acceptability. We welcome the opportunity to
contribute to the current inquiry.
2. PACTS is a transport safety research
group, as distinct from transport security. As such, this submission
will address the road safety implications of increased risk to
the security of transport systems; the submission does not directly
address the terms of reference. However, it does highlight a potentially
unintended consequence of policy decisions.
3. Since the terrorist attacks on the London
Underground of early July, there has been increased concern about
the future security of the British transport system, in particular
the mass passenger transit systems. This is indeed an important
issue which requires a considered and informed response.
4. The passenger transport systems have
developed over the past century as an open network, able to move
large numbers of passengers efficiently and on the principle of
`turn up and go'. At the same time, they have retained an admirable
passenger safety record across millions of journeys each day:
in 2003-04 there were 10 fatalities across the rail network in
England, Scotland and Wales, nine of which were caused by road
user misuse of level crossings. [1]
5. By way of contrast, in 2004, 3,221 people
died on roads in Great Britain and 31,130 were seriously injured.
Although the United Kingdom has the safest roads in Europe on
the basis of deaths per 100,000 head of population, road death
is the biggest cause of accidental deaths for everyone under 49
years of age. [2]Should
the recently announced trial of airport-style scanners on the
Heathrow Express be applied more widely, as well as sniffer dogs,
restricted entries and exits and other security procedures, there
is likely to be modal shift from rail and bus on to the roads
as passengers seek to avoid the inconvenience caused by these
interventions. This would increase the likelihood of death or
injury due to a road trauma.
6. PACTS is therefore concerned that any
measures implemented to deal with terrorism-related security on
mass transport systems are carefully analysed for their safety
implications. The Committee may not have considered this when
it expressed its support for the Heathrow Express scanner trials
in the inquiry's preliminary report.
7. This debate perhaps hinges on the notion
of acceptable risk. It is true that there is a higher risk of
death or injury in a car accident than a terror-related mass transit
attack. An article recently published in Injury Prevention[3]
compared the rate of death due to international terrorism and
death by road crash in 29 OECD countries; the study found that
the annual average rate of road fatalities was nearly 400 times
that of death as a result of a terrorist act.
8. PACTS would support a response to the
very serious issue of mass transport security that is not unduly
disproportionate with this risk. It may be of interest to this
Committee that the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee is
currently conducting an inquiry into the Government's policy on
the management of risk. Whilst the terms of reference for this
inquiry cover a wider remit than transport, it is important that
risk of death is seen in a broader context.
December 2005
1 Health and Safety Executive, Annual Report on Rail
Safety 2003-04, p29. Back
2
Office of National Statistics, Road Casualties Great Britain:
2004 Annual Report. Back
3
N Wilson, G Thomson, Injury Prevention 2005;11:332-333. Back
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