Last Sunday afternoon, the doors opened between Hounslow West and Hatton Cross on a packed Piccadilly Line train heading towards Heathrow. Yet another incident that shows the daily dangers of the job we do.
The unions are rightly demanding a formal investigation. No doubt management will try to concoct an outcome that leaves them blameless and writes it off as some kind of freak accident. Or maybe they will argue that it makes the case for more modern trains, minus drivers!
Quite the opposite. Any train carries a risk – however small – of an incident like this. That’s why we must keep drivers on trains (and why it was wrong to get rid of guards), and why we need staff on stations. In this case, the in-cab alert did its job and the driver was able to stop the train and deal with the fault. No driver? Disaster.