Ragnar Lofstedt: Our skewed sense of transport safety

The fatal train crash at Potters Bar was tragic, but the media may have overplayed its significance. There has been plenty of debate about its cause and who should be blamed. But is this intense argument warranted?

The main reason the crash has received so much attention is that the UK public thinks our railway network is disastrous. There's been the shambolic handling of the privatisation, and the constant reminders to rail passengers that trains are old, overcrowded and don't run on time, and that stations are dirty. Then, based on the number of accidents reported over the past years, there is a view that railways in the UK are also inherently unsafe.

But are the reactions from the public and the media rational? The answer is yes and no. It is difficult to blame the public for their views on the railways because every time they take a train they are reminded of the state of the railways. But if we examine the media outcry over the incident itself, it is useful to look at it from a risk-communication perspective, based on studies done at Decision Research in Oregon. The researchers identified the following issues:

* The public are more concerned about, and the media amplifies, high-consequence accidents though they may be low probability. Similarly, the public is less con cerned about, and the media underplays, low- consequence, high-probability accidents. So for example, within two days of Potters Bar, the same number of people were killed on English roads. Yet was there no media discussion of these deaths and no public outcry.

* The public are up to a thousand times more con- cerned about involuntary risks than voluntary ones. In other words, because they feel in control in their cars, they are less worried, though cars are much more dangerous.

* The most important factor is this one of public trust. In research I and others have done, we have found corre- lations between high public trust and low perceived risk and vice versa. As the British public no longer trust the country's railways, they will perceive the risks to be higher than they actually are. Had Railtrack been a trusted body, the discussion around it would have been much less intense and out of the media in a matter of days.

In Sweden, for instance, there was a minor accident at the Barseback nuclear power station in 1992. At first there was a media outcry in both Sweden and neighbouring Denmark. But once the owner of the plant had worked with the authorities to find an acceptable solution, the media debate quickly died down and the public felt the plant was as safe (and trusted) as before.

Had this been a nuclear plant in the UK, the outcry would have lasted for months and the public would still feel unsafe today (ask anyone who lives near Sellafield).

So how can Railtrack, or any other company, build up trust? Research at the Centre for Technology Assessment in Baden-Wurttenberg concluded that trust has three components: competence, fairness and efficiency, of which the most important is competence.

Of course, depending on the body in question, these variables will not necessarily be measured in the same way. But Railtrack needs to address the issue of public trust by, say, hiring competent engineers, respected economists and qualified communicators. Of course, this is not cheap. If you want to restore trust, money needs to be invested.

So where does all this leave the UK's rail passengers? Clearly, we should not stop using trains. They're still safer than driving, no matter what the media may make of the Potters Bar tragedy.

Professor Ragnar Lofstedt is director of King's Centre for Risk Management, King's College London.