GWR fined £1m over train passenger’s death in Bath

A large railway operator was fined 1 million pounds to violate the health and safety law when a young woman had a deadly head trauma after placing her head out of a drop window.

On December 1, 2018, 28 -year -old Bethan Roper was killed on a large Western Railway (GWR) train near Twerton near Twerton when he hit a tree branch.

The regulatory railway and road (Orr) office prosecute GWR on the grounds that he was aware of the issue of Droplight Windows, and had not yet applied the steps described in a risk assessment made two months before the death of MS Rope.

The GWR was fined and at the same time payment of £ 78,000 was ordered after the two numbers of violations and security laws were found guilty.

Richard Hines, the Chief Inspector of Orr’s railways, said, “Our thoughts remain with Bethan Rope’s family and friends.

“Death was an preventable tragedy that emphasizes the need to move quickly when security suggestions were made to managing the risks of train operators and to keep their passengers safe.”

Mrs. Roper of Penarth in Wales worked at the Wales Refugee Council, was the Unite Union Meeting, and he also chaired the Cardiff West Branch of the Socialist Party of Wales.

An investigation in 2021 was returning home from a Christmas shopping trip in Bath and was drunk when he got on the train.

Inspectors, the investigation on the window on the window, a yellow warning label, ‘Attention to the train when moving out the window,’ he said, an insufficient deterrent, he said.

In 2016, the death of Roper repeated a similar incident in which a passenger died near South London Balham, and in May 2017, he concluded at the Railway Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB), which issued security proposals.

GWR did not make a written risk assessment until September 2017, but this assessment found Droplight Windows as one of the most important passenger security risks.

Orr found the assessment inadequate and wrote to GWR about his concerns.

However, the assessment was not revised and GWR’s actions to reduce risk, said 2018 was not implemented before the deadly accident.

Since the death of Mrs. Rope, measures have been given in the railway industry to prevent passengers from bending their dropping windows.

Since then, trains with such windows have been withdrawn from the service or equipped with engineering controls to prevent the opening of the windows while the trains moved.

Orr said he welcomed the actions taken by GWR and wider industry to reduce risk.