Safety and Risk Management in Train Transportation: A Case Study of Kerang Train Disaster in Australia

This paper discusses the Kerang train disaster in Australia and how safety breaches contributed to the train crash. It also presents changes in policy and practice that resulted from the incident and how they were implemented.

Running head: SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT
SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
The incident and the response................................................................................................2
How safety breaches contributed to the train crash...............................................................3
Changes in the policy and practice that resulted from the incident and how they were
implemented...........................................................................................................................3
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References:.................................................................................................................................7

SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Transport system has a significant contribution towards the progress and development
of a country. It is very important for a country to ensure that its transportation system is safe,
secure and at the same time is sustainable, and competitive as well. Train is one of the
significant innovations of the transport industry. It has allowed the society too grow and
develop both notably and on a large scale. The towns and the cities situated far across each
other have been connected overnight because of the rapid growth in these areas. However,
due to negligence of the rail authorities and safety breaches there are several incidents of train
crashes seen in near about every year in different parts of the world. One of such significant
rail crashes is the Kerang train disaster that took place on 5th of June in the year 2007 in
Australia at about 13:40 (Waterson et al., 2017). Apart from this there are about 100 of
accidents that takes place in the level crossings of Australia each year. However this paper is
going to elaborate on the incident of Kerang train crash and assess how the safety breaches
have contributed to this. Furthermore, it shall present a detailed analysis over the changes in
the policy and practices that was resulted from the incident and they were implemented.
Discussion
The incident and the response
The massive disaster of Kerang train accident accident on the year 2007 in the
Australian state of Victoria in Piangil railway line (Salmon, Walker & Stanton, 2015). This
type of incident is known to be as level crossing collision. The major reason of the accident
was a truck consisted of a refrigerated curtain sided trailer. The train got collided with the
truck and resulted in the closure of all the nearby sections of the Murray Valley Highway.
About 11 people were killed in this incident and 23 were injured during the crash and this has

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made this the deadliest rail disaster in Australia since the year 1977 (Mulvihill et al., 2016).
The incident have led a catastrophic effects on the lives of the people.
This incident was the result of the Victorian truck drivers’ error. The name of the
truck driver was Christian Scholl (Salmon et al., 2014). He was charged over the eleven
deaths of the people in the level crossing smash. It was said by the court that this truck driver
did not see the crossing lights and due to this the dangerous incident had happened. However
he was acquitted over the same in the year 2009.
How safety breaches contributed to the train crash
It is to note that the Kerang level crossing is ranked as 140 in the list of 143 crossings
present in Victoria that are assessed for their safety (Salmon et al., 2017). It was because of
the negligence of the rail management and government that has led to the safety breach. The
should have changed the crossing lights when they came to know that the lights were of no
use and they are invisible for the ones who are a bit away from the crossing. However, since
the very crash, the level crossing was upgraded with advanced warning lights and with boom
gates in order to ensure that such things do not happen again.
Changes in the policy and practice that resulted from the incident and how they were
implemented
As per Ling et al. (2017), on an average, the incidents at the Australian railway level
crossings led to the death of about 37 people per year. The various levels of divergent
institutional arrangements, risk and the systems of control among the road and the rail
networks have increased the various complexities of the developing some coordinated
strategies in order to enhance the safety. With the same, the diversities in the jurisdictional
governance as well as in the management regimes are required to be considered in the drive
for the national compliance and consistency with the Australian Railway Safety Legislation

SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT
(Hess & Brown, 2018). Since the incident, the Australian government has made several
efforts and taken different approach for developing a New National Transport Policy. In
response to the provocation of providing the Australian citizen a competitive, continuous and
safe transport system, the Territory, State and the Commonwealth ministers is working
together by the ATC (Australian Transport Council) in order to coordinate the national road
and transport safety policy problems. ATC has accorded for developing and implementing
the 6 functional streams in order to progress the country’s National Policy Framework
(Graham & Kaye, 2015). It is to note that one of these six streams is led by the Safety SSC
with a main motive of progressing “a safe land transport system that meets Australia’s
mobility, social and economic objectives with maximum safety for its users”. With the same,
it is also to note that the development and growth of the National Railway Level Crossing
Safety Strategy of the year 2010-2020 is one of the number of initiatives that is managed by
Safety SSC in order to converge the objective. It is been supported by the RLCG (Rail Level
Crossing Group), the NRSEG (National Road Safety Executive Group) and the RSPRG (Rail
Safety Policy and Regulation Group) (Adeolu, Cornelius & Bamidele, 2016).
In this context, it is also to note that in order to attain the strategic motive of “National
Railway Level Crossing Safety Strategy (2010-2020)”, there are several principles that has
been adopted and they are-
 Safety system approach
 Evidence based approach
 Involvement with the government, the community, rail stakeholders and the industry
 Making use of prevailing information and building on global developments and
research
 Shared responsibilities by making use of cooperative approach.

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In order to meet all these principles and to make sure the possibility of the crashes and
the near misses at the railway crossings of Australia are been decreased (Larue et al.,
2015). With the same the RLCG has recognised a wide array of chances could be
regarded because this strategy has been implemented (Golchin, Tosato & Brunelli, 2016).
All these opportunities comprise of:
 Addressed the shortage of nationally available information and data in relation to
the railway level crossings
 Learning from the road safety practices and applying all these to the management
of railway level crossing safety
 Applying the safe system proposal in the environment of the railway level
crossing (Scott-Parker, Goode & Salmon, 2015)
 Recognising the complexities of the responsibilities, ownerships as well as the
management of the railway level crossings and hence, needing stronger
relationship in between every levels of government, rail and road industry.
 Improving the community understanding of the various different risks as well as
the vitality of the compliance
Furthermore, in order to ensure that these policies are been considered effectively,
several measures are been taken. National Railway Level Crossing Safety Strategy (2010-
2020) are been assessed every 3 consecutive years (Liang et al., 2017). In order to achieve the
strategic objective a rolling three years of Action Plan that are drawing on the principles that
are outlined in the strategy would be updated, developed each year and are reported against
on a daily basis. They communicate about all the relevant performance measures on the basis
of the work done as well as the latest data available on the railway level crossing safety data.
Furthermore, in order to measure the efficiency of the strategy, a wide range of measure have
been recognised. These measures are as follows:

SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT
Area of focus Measuring the success
Governance  Identifying the opportunities for the
coordination of the activities
Safe System  Benchmarking against the global
best practice
 A safe system approach
Education and enforcement  Increasing the level of compliance
 Increasing the level of awareness
among the community
Technology  Extending the investment in the
R&D
 Adopting new technologies
Risk Management  The decisions on investment are
being driven by the management
tool of risk assessment
Conclusion
The train technology has always been the market leader since a huge number of years.
However, with the advancements and developments the level of safety breaches is also
increasing side by side. From the above analysis, the disastrous accident of Kerang train in
the year 2007 was significant and most noteworthy for most of the people. However, since
then, the Australian rail industry has seen extensive changes comprising of the institutional
reorganisation, further investment and significant growth. Sustainable improvements in the
safety and risk performance have led from most of these changes, together with the
contribution and efforts of the railway staffs and managers to consistently improve. Some of

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the improvements have been derived from the learning that is taken from the operational
accidents and experience including the Kerang train accident.
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Adeolu, O. D., Cornelius, O. A., & Bamidele, A. B. (2016). Evaluation of Railway Level
Crossing Attributes on Accident Causation in Lagos, Nigeria. The Indonesian Journal
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Golchin, P., Tosato, P., & Brunelli, D. (2016, September). Zero-energy wake up for power
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International (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
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regime actor conflicts to system governance organizations. Journal of Environmental
Policy & Planning, 20(2), 128-142.
Larue, G. S., Rakotonirainy, A., Haworth, N. L., & Darvell, M. (2015). Assessing driver
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Ling, L., Guan, Q., Dhanasekar, M., & Thambiratnam, D. P. (2017). Dynamic simulation of
train–truck collision at level crossings. Vehicle System Dynamics, 55(1), 1-22.

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Mulvihill, C. M., Salmon, P. M., Beanland, V., Lenné, M. G., Read, G. J., Walker, G. H., &
Stanton, N. A. (2016). Using the decision ladder to understand road user decision
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