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AT 17.24 on 8 August 1996 the London Euston to Milton Keynes train passed through a red signal near Watford Junction and ploughed into an empty goods train, killing my colleague Ruth Holland, an associate editor of the British Medical Journal. The driver of the train was later cleared of criminal charges for having passed the red signal; the court accepted his defence that trees and bushes had obscured it. He also told the court that he could not remember seeing two early warning signals that would have told him to expect a red light at the next signal point.
At around ten past six in the morning of Wednesday 28 February 2001 a Land Rover towing a trailer plunged from the M62 motorway near Selby, down an embankment and ended up on the southbound track of the main East Coast railway line. The driver, Gary Hart, could not move his vehicle and ran for help. Two minutes later, a GNER express travelling from Newcastle to London at 125 miles an hour ran into the Land Rover. The train was derailed. It left the track, but continued for another 400 metres before smashing into a northbound freight train, travelling at nearly 60 miles an hour. Ten people were killed, including my former colleague - the clinical psychologist Steve Baldwin. Gary Hart was convicted of causing death by dangerous driving. It transpired that he had set off from home at 5am, having had no sleep as he had been up all night talking to a woman on the phone and on the internet.
Fatigue and sleep deprivation particularly depresses the capacity for vigilant attention, with sleepiness - the failure to maintain alert responding to the external world - contributing up to 30 per cent of traffic accidents. Sustained attention is also by far the major factor in 'Signals Passed at Danger' - the most common cause of accidents on railways (Edkins & Pollock, 1997). What can psychologists contribute to the understanding - and prevention - of such accidents?
Every day in the UK and worldwide thousands of railway signals are passed at danger. Thankfully only a small number of these incidents result in tragedy - partly through good fortune and partly through the presence in some...