KEY POINTS:
Depending on your point of view, it is either very appropriate or bitterly ironic that tomorrow marks the beginning of Rail Safety Week. To raise public awareness, a series of television advertisements will drive home the message that "trains have right of way and trains take a long
time to stop".
As a statement of the blindingly obvious, that takes some beating. Worse, it carries the implication that the carnage wrought when a 100-tonne locomotive hits a small passenger sedan is inevitably the driver's fault.
Worst of all - though this is more a matter of unfortunate timing than cynical deliberation - it comes barely a week after Wellington couple Brent and Renee Coombes died on a level crossing in the small Manawatu town on Ohingaiti, leaving behind their five-year-old daughter, Reef.
The precocious courage of the young girl, who told her aunt that "my mummy and daddy are dead and I've got to be strong", touched the hearts of all New Zealanders. It also served to underline what looked suspiciously like heartlessness on the part of the state rail body Ontrack and the Minister of Transport Safety Harry Duynhoven.
Ontrack deputy chairman Lex Henry set the tone of insensitive comment when he said he did not think that "every time there's a fatality at a particular crossing, on a cost-benefit analysis we need to go off an install [barrier] arms." But Duynhoven was close behind. "What the hell are we supposed to do if people drive in front of a train?" he asked.
Henry's bean-counter's utterance barely deserves the dignity of a response, although Reef Coombes may have one for him when she is a little older. But the answer to Duynhoven's question is this: "You are supposed to make it impossible - or as close to impossible as may be managed - for them to do so."
It is worth remembering that the crossing where the Coombes died is not on some dusty backroad used only by a few locals, but on the country's main state highway. The alignment of the rail makes it entirely predictable that sun strike, which, it seems plain, was a major contributory factor, would be a problem at certain times of the day for many weeks of the year. It does not take an advanced qualification in highway design to conclude that a sun-blinded driver who bangs into a barrier arm he did not see would be alerted to approaching danger. A nasty scrape across the bonnet, even a shattered windscreen, would have been a trivial inconvenience for the Coombes to have suffered by comparison with the fate that befell them.
As bureaucrats and politicians have ducked for cover and adopted a "blame-the-victim" strategy in the wake of this tragedy, much has been made of the fact that the road at Ohingaiti enters a sharp S-bend as it approaches the level crossing. This, it is said, would have meant that a driver would not see barrier arms until he was upon them. So why not place some where they could be seen, further away from the crossing, before the road curves into a S-bend? The mooted realignment of the road will take years and cost millions. Who else will die in the meantime? If Duynhoven can't explain why visible barrier arms weren't installed, can he at least explain why work isn't starting on installing them tomorrow morning?
It is all very well for him to say the Government is spending "hundreds of millions" upgrading a network that had been asset-stripped by its previous owners. It currently spends less than a million dollars on a mere seven sets of barrier arms a year. At the very least, it needs to sort out the Ohingaiti crossing - and the other two on SH1, which are in Northland. It is the least Reef Coombes deserves as a memorial to her parents.
