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I'll second the "open contempt" comment. I take the train to and from work, and while it's certainly safer than driving, it's a generally appalling service. I go out of London against the commuter rush so you'd expect things to be not so bad, but there are delays every day; I pity anyone going the other direction, they have to deal with that and overcrowding as well. Nobody knows what is going on. There are constant signal failures (I imagine that, every time it rains, they have to get someone round to light the little candles again), points failures, trains where the driver has just got off and left, the announcements are wrong, the timetables are pointless, the seats are broken, the stations are filthy, none of the staff know anything and the carriages are full of lairy Essex teenagers. I can't blame Railtrack/WAGN for the last point but everything else, I can.
The sense of contempt comes from the fact that these things obviously could be improved, but are not being, and instead prices go up in all sorts of ways (for instance, ticket prices go up, but they also restrict how railcards operate, so you can't get discounts on fares you used to.)
On the plus side, I can get on the train in the morning no matter how crap I am feeling, and get to work safely - can't really drive like that. Plus I can read the paper, or play on the Gameboy, or listen to music. But those are benefits of the concept of rail travel, rather than this specific implementation of it.
I think the reason people are so much more concerned over rail safety, apart from the fact that there's generally a very poor understanding of risk, is that, like sfd says, they feel like they're being deliberately taken advantage of. They're putting their lives in someone else's hands, and they see those people as not giving a shit. On the road, there's always the illusion that your fate is under your control - regardless of the fact that there's not much you can do about an 18-wheeler running into you while the driver's sending text messages. I don't worry much about train safety, I just hate the inefficiency and exploitation. |
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