Yes, Jim - exactly why I wondered why he stayed at his post... after all, as soon as a driver leaves his seat (or takes his feet off the pedal) the brakes are automatically applied. I think the likely explanation was that he was frozen with fear. And who wouldn't be?

Maybe inspection of points will now be considered to be a priotity... but at the expense of what else?

It seems people are now leaping out of the woodwork and saying 'it was never this bad when the trains were nationalised'... on the contrary... fatal rail accidents were far more frequent, and the death tolls were significantly higher. I'm not saying points were to blame for them all... and other factors will affect the statistics.

This BBC report shows the trend - and illustrates that many recent accidents were due to causes outside of the control of the railways authorities - such as someone parking on the track to commit suicide...

One thing is particularly noteworthy - the trend is far fewer deaths than there ever used to be, so someone is doing something right somewhere.

Why does this attract more interest than the many deaths per day on the roads? Quite simple, I think... if an accident involving so many people in one place at the same time were to happen on the roads, it would attract the same attention. That Neoplan Skyliner bus at the beginning of the year, for example...