The devastated families of rail crash victims have released a social media video calling on the Australian state and federal government to legislate mandatory train safety and visibility lighting standards in conjunction with peak trucking industry body the Australian Trucking Association (ATA).
The families have created a video showing the tragic impact of rail crashes in rural and regional Australia that features ATA CEO Mathew Munro, Australian country music legend Lee Kernaghan OAM and Lara Jensen who represents the families of rail crash victims killed in rural and regional rail crossing crashes.
The launch of the social media video follows years of intense lobbying by the families and supporters of rail crash victims, who have repeatedly called for the Australian government to legislate mandatory train and rolling stock safety and visibility lighting to improve safety at unprotected regional railway crossings. The video is backed by 20 prominent organisations nationally including peak farming, road transport, grassroots community groups and political parties The Nationals WA and The Liberals WA who are all supporting the push for compulsory safety lighting legislation.
Currently, 80 percent of the rail crossings outside metropolitan Australian cities don't have flashing warning lights or boom gates and trains don't have any safety, visibility or outline lighting. Flashing lights and outline lighting are the accepted indicator of a hazard across multiple industries from road transport to mining, aviation and construction. But not in rail - despite huge locomotives and wagons intersecting thousands of roads, without lights or boom gates, in regional Australia.
In 2000, West Australian pastoralist, Lara Jensen's 20-year-old brother, Christian and his friends Jess Broad and Hilary Smith, were killed at night when a train smashed into their car at a railway crossing fitted only with a give way sign. None of the occupants saw the train. They didn't stand a chance.
Following the triple fatality, State Coroner Alastair Hope found there was no speed, alcohol or drugs involved in the crash. He concluded inadequate train lighting was a contributing factor in the crash and resulting deaths and recommended all locomotives be fitted with external auxiliary safety lighting to effectively warn motorists of their approach. The recommendations were never enforced by governments or actioned by the rail industry.
'For decades, our families have campaigned to save lives and been met with successive governments unwilling to force the most basic rail safety reforms, an ineffective rail safety regulator and an obstructive rail industry. 'As a result of this inaction, we've needlessly lost many more people at rail crossings and the figure grows every year,' Ms Jensen said.
Australian country music legend and 2008 Australian of the Year, Lee Kernaghan has strong personal roots in the transport industry and with rural Australia. He says, "years on the road through country Australia have shown me how difficult these trains are to detect at night as they approach level crossings. They are simply not visible enough, and that needs to change.
ATA CEO Mathew Munro said "To ensure trucks can safely share the road with passenger vehicles and pedestrians, they must have marker lights showing their full length, width and height from any angle day or night. Yet right now, the biggest vehicles on our roads-trains-are the hardest to see!
Since Australia began collecting national data on level crossing deaths in 2016, another 44 Australians never made it home, 175 more have been injured.'
Ms Jensen said the massive disparity between mandatory lighting requirements for road transport compared to rail transport was an obvious example of different standards.
Coroners, transport safety investigators and countless committees have for decades pointed to a glaring problem with train illumination, yet our governments (state and federal) continue to present excuses why they can't and won't require the rail industry to comply with the same mandatory safety lighting standards that have long been in place in all hazardous and high-risk industries,' Ms Jensen continued.
'Our families urge members of the public to call on their federal and state transport ministers to make train safety lighting law.
I urge the Government to introduce legislation requiring safety lighting on all trains. It is a straightforward reform that will save the lives of people who either travel through rural and regional Australia or live in rural and regional Australia.'
