Questioning disaster inquiries
Sir Bernard Crossland, the man who led the scientific inquiry into the London King's Cross fire in 1987, has called public inquiries into such disasters 'time-consuming, expensive and inefficient'.
Crossland added that 'by the time the report of the inquiry is made available, the general public and the politicians have lost interest'. The inquiry into the King's Cross fire, which killed 31 people, produced 147 recommendations with a total cost of £300million. 'This figure raises the question whether, on a cost-benefit analysis, this money might have been spent more effectively in saving life, for instance in fitting and maintaining smoke detectors in private houses.'
While the particular suggestion of buying smoke detectors seems a little strange, it does seem to be the case that major incidents produce precautionary responses out of all proportion to the original accident - which lead to litigation and slower services, but not necessarily more safety. After the Hatfield train derailment in October 2000, in which four people died, repairs and checks caused massive delays across the rail network. This inconvenienced thousands of people, cost the operating company Railtrack hundreds of millions of pounds, and has fuelled a precautionary response that demands that rail travel in general puts safety above anything else: even if it means people struggling to get from A to B at all.
As for inquiries themselves, things have surely got worse since the King's Cross report, with the threat of civil litigation and prosecution hanging over the heads of all concerned. What we need is a proportionate reaction to accidents, not endless inquiries and excessive safety measures.
Safety inquiries 'inefficient', BBC News, 8 September 2003