We completely back the call by Oxford West and Abingdon MP Nicola Blackwood for Network Rail to be more ‘transparent’ about the safety of level crossings.
It remained insistent this week that the barrier at the Sandy Lane level crossing between Yarnton and Kidlington was in perfect working order on January 2, when Thomas Pizzey died when the car he was in was hit by a freight train.
But it was only on Tuesday that it finally admitted, after days of to-ing and fro-ing, that the barrier had failed 21 times over the course of 2012. A level crossing barrier is there to save lives. Twenty-one failures is unacceptably high.
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