[article] DART worker had heart attack while driving train

[Mark Gleeson]

DART worker had heart attack while driving train
By Luke Byrne
Wednesday March 30 2011
A MAN had a heart attack while he was the lone driver of a DART train containing up to 500 passengers, Dublin County Coroner's Court was told yesterday.

CIE employee John O'Neill (50) died just hours after he managed to stop at a station before being rushed to St Michael's Hospital in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, on December 22, 2010.

The court heard that CIE doctors gave Mr O'Neill the all-clear just two months before the incident, despite a history of serious heart problems.

Questioning Dr Declan Whelan, the company's chief medical officer, coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty repeatedly raised the safety of CIE policy to have only one train driver on journeys.

He said Mr O'Neill could have been unable to bring the train to a station or could have died while it was in motion.

Dr Whelan said it was normal policy across the EU to have just one train driver on short journeys. He added that there was a safety mechanism on DART lines which would stop a train if the driver did not pull a switch every 30 seconds.

But Dr Geraghty said that if the safety mechanism failed, this could leave a train hurtling down the tracks, full of passengers, with no driver.

- Luke Byrne


© Irish Independent
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/dart-worker-had-heart-attack-while-driving-train-2600000.html

[Mark Gleeson]

For the record there are independent safety systems in place

1. Driver safety device must be held down while train in motion
2. At random intervals the driver safety device must be released and reapplied when requested by the train
3. Failure to acknowledge a signaling computer request to slow down will stop the train - the train does not wait for the driver it starts to brake immediately for the target speed
4. Any DART can be brought to a standstill within 40 seconds by remote intervention
5. If the signaling computer onboard is not happy with the braking performance of the train it will stop the train
6. When all else fails turn the power off

If any of the above systems fail the train simply stops, if the signaling system fails, train stops.

If the driver tries to override any of the system, the train will phone in itself to the signaling control room and flag that a safety system has been manually disabled. Train then will refuse to exceed 20kph

In the Dun Laoghaire case the deceased driver stopped the train perfectly and actually managed to get out of the train and get to the booking office to seek assistance from what I have been told. Realising it was a heart attack the defibrillator from the Dun Laoghaire Harbour office was called for

Had the driver collapsed approaching Dun Laoghaire platform the train would have come to a complete halt about half way up the platform as the driver would have not acknowledged the signaling system request to slow for the speed limit at the platform end

[dowlingm]

Coroners do valuable work but I'm not sure that was the proper forum and he was properly equipped to decide what is a sufficient level of rail safety.

[Colm Moore]

I imagine heart attacks in traffic are a much greater problem.