Near miss between a train and a track worker at Shawford

The RAIB has just published a report looking at why a track worker only narrowly missed being struck by a train travelling at 85mph having gone onto the railway to locate a reported rail defect near Shawford station, Hampshire. This report noted the immediate cause was that the track worker had become distracted while he was standing on a line on which trains were running but further investigation noted other factors, such as no safe system of work, a breakdown in safety discipline and vigilence, as well as fatigue of the track worker, and an underlying resource resilience concern of the unit carrying out the work. If you or your colleagues undertake work on live railway lines it is worth taking a read of this report.  The picture taken from the onboard train forward facing CCTV camera when the train was one second away from the track worker is a reminder of how dangerous and potentially life threatening getting distracted in a high risk environment can be.  The report can be downloaded at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/602364/R052017_170323_Shawford.pdf.