Media centre

Wednesday 14 Jul 2004

YOUNG PEOPLE WARNED OF DANGERS OF RAILWAY CRIME IN APPROACH TO SCHOOL HOLIDAYS

Region & Route:

| Southern

 With school summer holidays fast approaching, the rail industry is warning young people of the foolishness of playing on, or taking short cuts across the railway.  School holiday periods typically see an increase in railway crime activities, with youths taking advantage of the free time and longer daylight hours to venture on or around the railway.  Acts of railway crime, including trespass and vandalism, are committed every 90 seconds on the railways during peak periods, i.e. between 4pm and 8pm in daylight hours.  90% of incidents are attributable to young people aged 8-16 years, most of whom are male.  In 2003, trespass on the railway led to 60 deaths (not including suicides) and six of these were child fatalities.  There were at least 450 recorded incidents of trespass and vandalism in East Anglia during 2003.  Of these incidents, 295 took place on the West Anglia route, from Liverpool Street to King’s Lynn via Cambridge.  Examples of incidents which took place during the summer holidays are: -    Bishops Stortford (July 2003) - ballast and debris placed on line, children playing on railway -    Cherry Hinton (August 2003) - youths trespassing on the line, person riding motorbike on railway Other incidents involved youths climbing on railway bridges, playing around level crossings and ‘playing chicken’ in front of trains. - more - Railway Crime - 2 Network Rail and its industry partners are appealing to schools, parents and communities to help them get the message across: stay off the tracks.  Jon Wiseman, Network Rail Route Director says: “We must make young people sit up and take notice of the dangers and foolishness of using the railway as a playground.  The consequences can be harsh, from being frog-marched home by the police to face angry parents, to hefty fines, imprisonment and possibly even serious injury or death. “As an industry we will continue to address crime on the network but we cannot do it alone.  This is not just a railway problem, but one shared with the wider community.  The crimes we see on the railway are often just the same as those being experienced on the other side of the boundary fence, although the consequences can be so much more tragic. “The school summer break is peak crime-time for the railways and we ask all schools and parents to hammer home the message – keep off the tracks and stay alive.” The rail industry undertakes many other activities to educate and warn young people of the railway safety message.  These include school visits by railway workers, British Transport Police and the emergency services, educational material supplied to schools, theatre productions about safety, and a specially developed educational website, www.trackoff.org, providing a valuable resource for teachers and schools. In recent years these co-ordinated industry initiatives have been successful in reducing crime on the line.  The latest figures released last month (9 June) by the Rail Safety and Standards Board show that there was a 29% reduction in all types of reportable train accidents caused by vandalism, which includes missiles striking trains, arson on board trains and trains striking objects placed on the tracks.