06.07.09
Simulated rail accident investigation
Cranfield University has been associated with aircraft accident investigation for over thirty years. Its partnership with the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has meant it has trained hundreds of investigators from around the world to participate in high-profile investigations on every continent including the Pan Am B747 which exploded over Lockerbie in 1989 and the Air France Concorde which crashed near Paris in 2000.
Following the appointment of Graham Braithwaite – now professor of Safety and Accident Investigation at Cranfield - in 2003, the University started working with the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) and the newly formed Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) to develop a cross-modal course that provided core training for professional accident investigators. As investigators recruited by the three DfT accident investigation branches arrive with considerable experience in their technical discipline, the challenge for such a course was to ensure they go away “…thinking like investigators”.
This means covering a diverse range of topics over three weeks including crisis management and initial response; managing hazards at the accident site; evidence collection and preservation; witness interviewing; human factors; analysis techniques; the development of recommendations and dealing with everyone from the families of victims through to the regulators, manufacturers and operators.
The Cranfield courses place a strong emphasis on the need for practical, hands-on training. It is impossible to learn how to interview a witness for example without practising with a range of ‘real’ witnesses. It is also hard to appreciate how all of the elements of investigation fit together unless you can be immersed in the sort of situation that an accident will present.
To this end, simulation has been a big part of the Cranfield investigator experience, originally using crashed aircraft donated by insurers which are set up on the University’s airport. In recent years, these were supplemented by a marine exercise using a fishing trawler that had been recovered from the seabed by MAIB.
On 30th January 2009, the simulations went fully multimodal with the first simulated rail accident investigation. With the enthusiastic help of the Northampton and Lamport railway, a scenario was devised to illustrate many of the challenges faced by RAIB investigators in their daily work. A Class 31 locomotive hauling an engineers’ train entered a poorly marked worksite whilst the lookout was distracted and collided with a PW trolley before the workers were able to move it. One of the workers was hit by the trolley and killed.
This scenario was presented to group four groups of investigators who were then responsible for evaluating and capturing the evidence on site including the testimonies of a range of witnesses. Staff from the Northampton and Lamport railway volunteered to be interviewed and a variety of other actors played roles including a local farmer, worried neighbour, news reporter and even a trainspotter.
The exercise was watched by the Safety and Accident Investigation Centre’s Industry Advisory Board which included senior figures from the Royal Navy, Rolls Royce, British Airways, the MAIB and Carolyn Griffiths, the chief inspector of the RAIB,.
Following the site phase, the teams of investigators will then apply analysis techniques to resolve the critical safety factors behind the occurrence to develop recommendations which are then subject to peer review by senior investigators. To add to the realism, the investigators then face a mock courtroom situation where they are cross-examined by a barrister on what they experienced on site.
Such high fidelity simulation of accidents is rare and the new course has been attended by rail industry investigators from Norway, Ireland, Denmark, Netherlands, Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Korea. The course has been run ten times since 2004 and many lessons have been learned by delegates looking at other transport modes for inspiration. What the railways do well is not necessarily the same as marine or aviation industries. By sharing the fundamentals of investigation, the RAIB has been able to learn from MAIB and AAIB and is now actively sharing its own experiences.
Accident investigation is not rocket science but the combination of skills, many of which are required all at once in very trying circumstances, is hard to develop. The role of simulation has been validated in so many arenas and its value in training accident investigators is paramount. Following the success of the first rail accident simulation, a second is planned for May and discussions are already taking place for a larger exercise to match the 5-day investigation simulations that currently run for aircraft accident investigators.
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