Views wanted on possible safety fence on Marple Aqueduct

[IanD]

Does anyone have any information about the causes of deaths on the canals over (say) the last ten years?

 

My guess is that #1 is accidents at locks, #2 is people falling off boats (maybe hitting their head) and drowning, the rest are negligible in comparison.

 

It's difficult to see what could be done to reduce these risks without greatly changing the character of the canals, which is of course why people want to spend time on them.

 

Whenever there's a rare fatal accident (e.g. the death in Harecastle Tunnel) there are always cries of "something must be done, no price is too high to save a life!" -- but unfortunate as such incidents are, often the best thing to do is nothing because there is no realistic way to reduce the risk without either spending vast amounts of money or significantly infringing on people's personal freedom.

 

For example, the falling-off-boat-hitting-head-drowning problem (and maybe the Harecastle death) could be fixed if everybody not inside a boat was forced to wear cycling helmets and full lifejackets (ones big enough to rotate you face-up when unconscious). Apart from the huge cost, I bet that if most people were told how unlikely this was to happen to them they'd think it wasn't worth it -- if this wasn't true you'd see lots of safety-conscious people (or paranoid ones...) doing this already. I'm also sure that if CRT suggested they might make such wearing compulsory there would be a massive outcry ;-)

 

People not understanding risk is one of the big problems facing the world today, for example with regard to power generation. One of the objections to wind farms was that they kill birds, with figures of tens of thousands per year (terrible!) quoted for a big windfarm. This sounds like a big number, but to put in in perspective in the UK alone cats kill several hundred million birds per year -- did anyone suggest we should ban cats? And the often-misquoted safety and waste issues with nuclear power ignore the fact that in the entire history of sometimes-incompetent nuclear power generation including TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima and so on, this has killed about the same number of people as a typical month of coal mining in China -- yes there are risks with anything, but if you look at them impartially nuclear power done properly (e.g. France over the last 50 years, most of their energy, no significant incidents) is *way* less risky than fossil fuels, never mind the tiny little global warming problem...

Edited January 5, 2015 by IanD

[Guest]

ed. to remove drivel (mine not somebody else's)

Edited January 5, 2015 by The Dog House

[alan_fincher]

For example, the falling-off-boat-hitting-head-drowning problem (and the Harecastle death) could be fixed if everybody not inside a boat was forced to wear cycling helmets and full lifejackets (ones big enough to rotate you face-up when unconscious).

 

Not according to the tunnel keeper who talked to us about it when we made a passage some weeks after the incident occurred.

I'm not aware that there has ever been great detail given in public about this horrendous incident, but it seemed to be the view of those who work there that head hitting was highly unlikely have entered into the equation, and that anyway given what happened subsequently, that a full life jacket is unlikely to have made a difference.

 

I'm actually disappointed that this seems to have resulted in a situation where wearing a life jacket will at least be strongly recommended as good practice, even if not made mandatory.

 

The case for it seems completely unproven to me, unless information has ever been made available that I'm not aware of.

 

 

Just curious but what has happened to the fence that was on the rail bridge???

Any chance you are confusing the two railway aqueducts referred to in this thread, (thread is about Marple, but that picture is Chirk)?

[IanD]

I meant to say "maybe the Harecastle death", since it's still not certain what happened.

 

I'd still love to see some statistics -- the "life jacket recommended" issue is another one where I've never seen any real justification (how many lives would be saved, what would be the cost of typically 4 full lifejackets on every boat) apart from "it'll make things safer". Let's fact it, if you fall in the canal the first thing to do is normally to stand up...

Edited January 5, 2015 by IanD

[Guest]

Any chance you are confusing the two railway aqueducts referred to in this thread, (thread is about Marple, but that picture is Chirk)?

Yes every chance........derrr..

[alan_fincher]

I meant to say "maybe the Harecastle death", since it's still not certain what happened.

 

I'd still love to see some statistics...

Fair enough.

 

I actually think, and have said in the past, that it would be educational to be able to see a full analysis of such tragedies.

 

However, I think I am correct in saying, that unless they lead to something like an MAIB investigation, such information is often never made public.

 

I know I was told that if it comes down to a coroner's inquest, then the coroner's report can not be sighted by the general public, and is private to the coroner's court and those involved.

 

I can see some logic to that, because they can contain gruesome detail about injuries any work done in any post mortem. My younger brother was killed in a road traffic accident, and I would not particularly like to see the full detail of that in the public domain on the Internet - it made very unpleasant reading.

 

However it does mean we often never know what it is believed actually happened, and hence can't know if an incident is one that lack of attention might cause to also happen to us, or whether it was either related to doing something incredibly stupid, or an unrelated medical emergency.

 

For example some reports suggested that the casualty in Harecastle was on the roof of his boat - something that seems highly implausible as he seems to have been a mature experienced owner, and probably not just out of the pub. Others have suggested he was taken ill with some kind of seizure, unrelated to steering the boat. I suspect we will never be told what the best possible analysis of the situation is, but if the incident is used to promote or enforce wearing life-jackets, without the justification for that being made available, that seems wrong to me.

[Guest]

Let's fact it, if you fall in the canal the first thing to do is normally to stand up...

Not where we do most of our boating you don't.

[BruceinSanity]

Does anyone have any information about the causes of deaths on the canals over (say) the last ten years?

 

My guess is that #1 is accidents at locks, #2 is people falling off boats (maybe hitting their head) and drowning, the rest are negligible in comparison.

 

It's difficult to see what could be done to reduce these risks without greatly changing the character of the canals, which is of course why people want to spend time on them.

 

 

Where's Rob@BSS when you need him?

 

I thought #1 was falling in at night after going to the pub or drinking on board, in which case banning alcohol would be the answer.

 

Except that we know what that leads to.

 

I think CRT is powerless to avoid having to erect this wretched fence in the present circs, after coming close to being prosecuted over the Stourport tragedy, but it will be a total waste of resources.

[IanD]

Surely no gruesome details are needed -- just a brief summary of what lead to the death (e.g. steerer fell off stern, banged head on stern, drowned; person fell into lock from crossing gate and was crushed by boat) and what might have avoided it?

 

You'd think that as a public body responsible for safety on the canals, CRT would already have such information -- otherwise how do they know where to spend money (or change rules) to make the system safer?

 

Without being morbid, it could also help nervous people (e.g. hirers) decide whether to take extra precautions (e.g. lifejacket) or to stop worrying about it (e.g. negligible risk).

 

My guess is that holidaying on the canals is far safer than driving a car, going skiing or climbing, or crossing the road, and that the best thing to do is to stop worrying and enjoy it ;-)

Not where we do most of our boating you don't.

That's why I said "normally" ;-)

 

My brother-in-law was on a holiday in Cheshire with mates years ago, and one night (after the pub?) one of them did fall in and drown -- this is where the canal is very deep due to salt mining subsidence. But this is the exception that proves the rule (yes, in the correct use of the phrase)...

[alan_fincher]

Where's Rob@BSS when you need him?

 

I thought #1 was falling in at night after going to the pub or drinking on board, in which case banning alcohol would be the answer.

 

 

I have little doubt if you include all "drink related" it would be the number 1 by aa big margin.

 

Not just walking down icy towpaths, or on slippery lock gates or gunwales, but also actions like cranking a stove up to maximum on returning to the boat, and then falling asleep before winding it back again. Or just stuffing something in air vents, because there's a howling draught, and it will be OK, won't it?

 

I suspect the kind of stuff we are talking about with aqueduct or tunnel deaths is very small scale by comparison.

 

I know in the past when I have tried questioning actual deaths due to problems with gas fridges, (something people get paranoid about, but where I believe fatalities are actually very few), that nobody has been able to produce numbers.

[twbm]

I think the difficulty here is that as a corporate entity, the directors of C&RT have got to be mindful that they are liable to be a target for litigation if anyone is hurt or dies anywhere on the system. I'm not saying they should be, but that's the way our society is now, with armies of no-win no-fee solicitors waiting to help. (I believe this to be the source of much of these changes, not 'H&S gone mad', albeit fear of litigation triggers the H&S. In fact H&S now puts as much onus of responsibility on the individual as it does on the corporate entity).

 

Once you accept that, you have to then look at mitigation, i.e. do the risk assessments, then work out what can be done to reduce the high scoring risks to low scores. Where you are a corporate organisation with all the possible victims are under your control, training and briefings can be part of that strategy, but where they are not then more overt physical steps could be necessary.

 

As far as locks and the towpath go, you might get somewhere with the argument that water is a natural element occurring in many forms as well as canals that has been around for a long time, and it is a universally well known fact that prolonged full immersion can be harmful. Where there is a more specific risk created by a man made construction or activity, then a more targeted approach could be required. In this case a fence would seem to fit the bill. The test is always 'If I was gripping the brass rail in the coroners court and got asked to explain what we'd done about a known risk, what would I say, and would it keep me out of a criminal court.'

 

It might alter the appearance a bit, but as long as it's of a suitable style, so what? I'd rather that £100k of maintenance money was spent on a fence now than £500k+ on compensation in the future.

[Tuscan]

I am sure that CRT were initially not in favour of recommending life jackets be worn and then someone from the Health and Safety department probably pointed out that if they ignored the Coroners recomendations they were probably liable to be sued should there be another fatality and the unfortunate victim was not wearing a life jacket.

[IanD]

Where's Rob@BSS when you need him?

 

I thought #1 was falling in at night after going to the pub or drinking on board, in which case banning alcohol would be the answer.

 

Except that we know what that leads to.

 

I think CRT is powerless to avoid having to erect this wretched fence in the present circs, after coming close to being prosecuted over the Stourport tragedy, but it will be a total waste of resources.

If you want to save deaths by banning alcohol, far more drunks are run over and killed crossing the roads (or driving!) than in canals.

 

The general principle for H&S is to prevent accidental injury or death to people who are behaving reasonably. People doing stupid things will always find imaginative ways of killing themselves, it's not the job of H&S to stop you cutting your own head off with a chainsaw when drunk. If there are hazards that can injure or kill people who are not behaving stupidly, then H&S says reasonable precautions should be taken if these are justified -- the precautions can be warning signs ("danger of death!") or physical barriers like a railing.

 

Back to the case of Marple, the offside is not easily accessible to the public, the hazard is not exactly hidden, and there are warning signs -- which could maybe be made bigger and more explicit. If people jump across it for a dare and fall off, they can just as easily -- and I bet more often! -- do the same at any lock, and fall in and drown, but we don't suggest (yet!) putting railings round every lock.

[alan_fincher]

Surely no gruesome details are needed -- just a brief summary of what lead to the death (e.g. steerer fell off stern, banged head on stern, drowned; person fell into lock from crossing gate and was crushed by boat) and what might have avoided it?

 

Yes, I'm not disagreeing.

 

What I'm saying is it doesn't (often) seem to happen at the moment.

 

I'm not fully up to speed on the Harecastle incident, but believe as a minimum it has resulted in the suggestion that wearing life jackets is now highly recommended. However, I have seen no published statement about what it it is concluded happened, so hence can't make a judgement about whether a case is established for this reaction.

 

OK, I suppose you could argue that if you have life jackets you should wear them, provided there is no indication it might increase risks to you. But then where do you draw the line - working locks, or when just at the tiller on a narrow canal ?

 

The only cases I'm aware of where we really hear the full story are where MAIB issue a full report, as in the case of say the sinking of the wide beam hire boat "Drum Major", or the intense fire that broke out in the Triton built boat "Lindy Lou". We probably don't need that much information in the public domain to make sensible decisions, (and it is no doubt deeply distressing to friends and family of those who died), but for most other cases we need far more than we typically get to see, I think.

[alan_fincher]

Back to the case of Marple, the offside is not easily accessible to the public, the hazard is not exactly hidden, and there are warning signs -- which could maybe be made bigger and more explicit.

 

Clearly in the case of the Stourport tragedy, BW did not feel it could get away with erecting "don't cross these foot bridges unless you are a boat crew working the lock" signs, (or even simply "no cycling" signs in the whole area), and by making sure life belts were available.

 

It has resulted in masses of hand rails on bridges across lock tails, when previously there were none. Rightly or wrongly, (and presumably after a lot of legal advice), they must have concluded that signs and life jackets would not protect them from future litigation.

 

As others have suggested, I assume similar things are driving this proposal.

[Guest]

That's why I said "normally" ;-)

 

My brother-in-law was on a holiday in Cheshire with mates years ago, and one night (after the pub?) one of them did fall in and drown -- this is where the canal is very deep due to salt mining subsidence. But this is the exception that proves the rule (yes, in the correct use of the phrase)...

I actually think there are quite a few parts of the system that would catch people out if they simply tried the 'standing up technique' not only because of the depth but because of what is on the bottom.

 

I fell in at Mercia Marina which is on the T&M which is a 'shallow' canal, the marina it turned out was a lot deeper than I expected and standing up was defo. not an option...

[IanD]

I think the difficulty here is that as a corporate entity, the directors of C&RT have got to be mindful that they are liable to be a target for litigation if anyone is hurt or dies anywhere on the system. I'm not saying they should be, but that's the way our society is now, with armies of no-win no-fee solicitors waiting to help. (I believe this to be the source of much of these changes, not 'H&S gone mad', albeit fear of litigation triggers the H&S. In fact H&S now puts as much onus of responsibility on the individual as it does on the corporate entity).

 

Once you accept that, you have to then look at mitigation, i.e. do the risk assessments, then work out what can be done to reduce the high scoring risks to low scores. Where you are a corporate organisation with all the possible victims are under your control, training and briefings can be part of that strategy, but where they are not then more overt physical steps could be necessary.

 

As far as locks and the towpath go, you might get somewhere with the argument that water is a natural element occurring in many forms as well as canals that has been around for a long time, and it is a universally well known fact that prolonged full immersion can be harmful. Where there is a more specific risk created by a man made construction or activity, then a more targeted approach could be required. In this case a fence would seem to fit the bill. The test is always 'If I was gripping the brass rail in the coroners court and got asked to explain what we'd done about a known risk, what would I say, and would it keep me out of a criminal court.'

 

It might alter the appearance a bit, but as long as it's of a suitable style, so what? I'd rather that £100k of maintenance money was spent on a fence now than £500k+ on compensation in the future.

It's always possible to conjure up any number of accidents which might conceivably happen and say "somebody should prevent this" -- usually with somebody else's money. You still have to look at the chance of it happening (and the resulting cost) vs. the cost of preventing it, and this is a reasonable (and often-used) defence in court since no organisation can spend an infinite amount of money preventing all possible risks -- its easy to say "no cost is too high to save a life!" if you don't have to pay (and in reality the answer used by insurers is about a million pounds).

 

In any case, an organisation like CRT who is worried about this should do proper risk assessments *and fix the biggest risks first* -- if this was Marple then fine, if it was #10 on the list then not. If they listened to the doomsayers and fixed Marple and then somebody was killed due to something higher up the list which wasn't fixed as a result, they'd get sued anyway

I actually think there are quite a few parts of the system that would catch people out if they simply tried the 'standing up technique' not only because of the depth but because of what is on the bottom.

 

I fell in at Mercia Marina which is on the T&M which is a 'shallow' canal, the marina it turned out was a lot deeper than I expected and standing up was defo. not an option...

So that's another exception then. The rule still stands...

[IanD]

 

Clearly in the case of the Stourport tragedy, BW did not feel it could get away with erecting "don't cross these foot bridges unless you are a boat crew working the lock" signs, (or even simply "no cycling" signs in the whole area), and by making sure life belts were available.

 

It has resulted in masses of hand rails on bridges across lock tails, when previously there were none. Rightly or wrongly, (and presumably after a lot of legal advice), they must have concluded that signs and life jackets would not protect them from future litigation.

 

As others have suggested, I assume similar things are driving this proposal.

The big difference is that lock tail bridges are accessible to the general public and are also legitimately used as part of normal lock operation; it's not unreasonable to have safety hand rails here, and many locks had them anyway. The offside at Marple is not accessible and not normally used, it's not the same case at all.

 

If the reason is to save drunken youths jumping across for a dare and falling off, there are many places other than Marple they could do things like this, including running across dual carriageways for a dare which has certainly killed a lot more of them than Marple ;-)

 

CRTs job is not to make the canals completely safe for idiots -- because this is impossible -- it's to make them reasonably safe for people using the canals normally for pleasure/living/business.

Edited January 5, 2015 by IanD

[Guest]

So that's another exception then. The rule still stands...

Well to be honest I think it depends on how much of the system it is safe to stand up and how much it isn't. I used to subscribe to the 'just stand up' school of thought but after reading stuff on here and elsewhere (and actually falling in myself) I think people should be aware that it isn't automatically the best thing to do that is all the point I wanted to make as it could prove dangerous to engender the concept it's a 'rule' that it's normally best to just try and stand up.

 

Anyway I've made my point so I'll leave you to it.

[IanD]

Talking about CRT making the canals safe, how about hydraulic paddle gear with no way to quickly drop a paddle in an emergency? How many of these horrors are still around?

 

Many years ago we were going down Marsworth at about 1am just before Xmas (no, not on a hire boat) and the bows got hung up in the corner behind the bottom gate (72 foot converted working boat -- "Baron" with Kate & Snowy, if anyone remembers it); by the time I'd managed to close the bottom paddles the boat was not far from capsizing, due to the number of turns it took to wind the sodding paddles down.

 

Mind you, I had been drinking -- a big mug of home-made chicken soup, if I remember correctly -- so it must have been partly my fault ;-)

Edited January 5, 2015 by IanD

[KenK]

The problem C&RT have is the compensation culture which has developed in this country.

 

A couple of examples.

 

1 My daughter had a bump in her car, cost to repair her car in a garage, £125.00 OK mates rates but even without that it would have been no more than £200.00. Other drivers claim £16,500.00, which the insurance company paid.

 

2 Twenty years ago a welder in Silvertown in London was working on top of a 50 foot storage tank, he slipped, fell and was killed. He was welding rings which are used to secure the safety harness required when working at height. His widow sued the company, her legal representative won the case and she was awarded £250,000. The welder was wearing a safety harness but has not clipped on, the companies regulations clearly stated that a safety harness must be worn when working at height, they even specified the height as above six feet, what they didn't say was that the harness must be clipped on. Any normal sensible person would think that common sense would prevail alas it is in short supply and unless every I is dotted and T crossed companies are always open to claims.

 

I don't agree with the fence but I can understand why C&RT have to consider it, in this day and age if there was a death, however stupid the reason, they would be sued and that would cost far more than any fence.

 

Ken

[IanD]

Agreed that CRT have to consider it, but as you say the issue is *if* there's a death (and CRT are found to be at fault) this would (probably) cost more than a fence. The difference is that there's 100% chance of having to pay for the fence, but a much smaller chance of having to pay compensation -- this is risk management.

 

Any company having to do risk management has to go through exactly the same process; if the answer is that putting the fence up is justified then that's fine (and if they don't do it they'll get hammered in court), if the answer is that risk assessment shows it isn't justified then that's their defence in court if they ever get sued, because no company can be expected to reduce all risks to zero regardless of cost or risk.

[Ray T]

As Chirk has been mentioned as similar to Marple I found this Photo in NarrowBoat Summer 2006.

 

It is interesting for comparison, incidentally taken in 1927/8, with fence! Yes I know it is towpath side bt to me it looks similar to CRT's proposal for Marple.

 

[/url]Chirk Aqueduct

Edited January 7, 2015 by Ray T

[churchward]

Chirk still has a fence the tow path side and so does Marple, well a wall anyway.

Edited January 7, 2015 by churchward

[DHutch]

Last day and a half to submit your thoughts.

 

https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/about-us/consultations/current-consultations

 

 

Daniel