Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The former Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services inquired into level crossing safety in 2004 and produced a report entitled Train illumination.. That inquiry actually started off as a road safety inquiry, but two ladies from Western Australia, Merrilea Broad and Karen Morrissey, who had lost children at the Yarramony level crossing in Western Australia, appeared before the committee. Their evidence was so compelling and heart wrenching that we decided to take level crossings as a separate subset. I think that was a very good move.

At the time, we found that about 70 to 80 per cent of train accidents occurred in daylight, which made it all the more bewildering why we had to concentrate so heavily on lighting. The new report by the Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government has gone on to talk more about that. I note two particular recommendations in the committee’s report. One was that the standard 7531 be adopted as a mandatory requirement for the ongoing maintenance of retro-reflected materials. Madam Deputy Speaker, let me give you an example of how important that is. When a flat top wagon goes through a level crossing it has no lights on it and no reflective strips and so it just looks like a black streak. If it is a passive crossing—one without lights or boom gates—it is very easy, say, for a motor cyclist to ride straight into it. I am aware of that occurring on one occasion in Bundaberg. It is a similar situation with cane bins. When cane bins of cane trains go past you, it is generally on darkened crossings. They appear like an amorphous thing moving in front of you. If reflective tape or paint is put on the cane bins then, as the car lights hit that, the light is reflected back at you. As the train passes through the crossing, you get this flickering effect as each carriage goes by. It is a similar situation with state or privately owned trains on standard or narrow gauge lines. What the committee is recommending is not a hard thing to do.

When the previous committee went to Western Australia, we saw a thing that examines the flat spots and bearings on the wheels of trains used in the Pilbara. A foaming brush with a jet of water is used on the trains once every month or whenever it is that the trains are washed. I do not think that is a difficult thing to do. If the state rail authorities and the private operators really wanted to put their minds to it, that could be done.

The committee also looked at the efficacy of auxiliary lighting. I think the yellow revolving beacon has some merit. It is certainly used a lot in the sugar industry. Sometimes it is at the front of trains and sometimes it is also at the rear of trains. If you come up to a level crossing in a cane area—not a lot of people go across these crossings—and you see a yellow light coming through the tops of the sugar cane, you click immediately to the fact that there is a train coming. To have the flickering worked in such a way that it came on as you came up to a level crossing rather than it being on all the time is, I think, something that we could look at.

I support the chairman’s comments that we need to do something about rumble strips. If your car goes bumpty, bumpty, bump as you come up to a level crossing, you are immediately alerted to the fact that there is a crossing there. When you see the circumstances of that dreadful accident in Victoria, you just wonder whether the responses of the driver—albeit that he has been acquitted; I go along with that; I think that is fair enough—might have been triggered a bit more quickly if there had been that bumpty, bumpty, bump effect as he approached the level crossing.

Also, some satellite and GPS type devices in cars emit a signal when they pass by a school. We have recommended that that be extended to level crossings so that, as you come up to a level crossing and you are, say, 150 metres out, you get a similar signal. There are lots of things still to be done. Many people are killed on level crossings. Most of them are killed at the front of the train but some are killed at the side of the train—(Time expired)

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