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Posted By J Knight
Hi Folks,
Network Rail has just received a four million pound fine for Paddington. This continues the recent trend for punitive fines in the Rail industry, but the question that springs to my mind is, are rail crashes so much 'worse' than other fatal or serious events which attract smaller fines? Or is it just that they are much more in the public eye?
John
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Posted By Bob Shillabeer
This will no doubt be a popular theme over the next few hours. This still causes some rather emotive comments such as it's the tax payer who pays, etc, but stop and think just for a moment.
A nationally know organisation has been fine £4m plus £225,000 costs. Yes it's not those responsible who must pay up, or even those directly involved in the design, etc of the signalling system who are paying the fine. It's the corporate body. The result will remain on the company for a long time, it's that companies reputation that is tarnished and that of the industry as a whole which will be less respected by the public.
But, remember this is a token fine to say that anyone who is responsible for this sort of incident are likely to be dealt with quite severely by the courts. £4m a drop in the ocean in terms of revenue of Network Rail, yes but look back and consider it lead to the end of the then owning company and its shareholders, the fine in nothing compared to the fact that Railtrack went under.
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Posted By Jim Walker
Bob,
As you say - its tax payer who pays.
Why those who were in charge of the purse strings at the time (and walked away with eye watering bonuses & pensions) are not now challenged is beyond me.
Surely they fraudulently obtained their salaries (and numerous perks) by failing to show good stewardship of the "company".
I reckon if someone went after these corporate crooks, it would concentrate the minds of many a CEO.
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Posted By Ken Dickson
Given the population at risk, yes they are worse. The fine in this case would also have been influenced by the level of negligence.
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Posted By peter gotch
All in line with the sentencing principles in R v Howe Engineering and R v Friskies Petcare.
From the latter......
"Those reported cases show that fines in excess of £500,000 (as this one was) tend to be reserved for those cases where a major public disaster occurs, for example, the collapse of the railway tunnel constructed under Heathrow Airport, or derailment of railway trains - that is to say, cases where the breaches of regulations put large numbers of the public at risk of serious injury or more. This is not one of those cases."
Regards, Peter
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Posted By Merv Newman
Would it not have been more sensible to require them to spend £4M on a detailed RA and SSOW to correct the original problems ?
Or would that have to be £4G ?
Anyway, so they (or we) (or you, actually, not me) cough up the money. Will that change anything ?
Merv
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