Sleepy driver may have caused British train crash

By BARRIE CLEMENT, IAN HERBERT AND STEVE BOGGAN Herald correspondents

LONDON - A driver falling asleep at the wheel may have caused the train crash in which 13 people were killed and more than 70 injured.

Police were pursuing the theory that the driver of a Land Rover, pulling a trailer with a car on it, had nodded off as he drove along the M62 before dawn, setting off the series of events that ended in the devastating head-on collision.

The vehicle lurched off the motorway and carried on for 90 metres down an embankment before coming to rest on the southbound section of the east coast main line between Newcastle and London.

Just 40 seconds later, an express passenger train travelling at about 190 kph slammed into the Land Rover and then became derailed at Great Heck, near Selby in North Yorkshire, and continued upright for half a mile.

The Great North Eastern Railways train with nearly 100 people on board then crashed almost head-on into an oncoming train loaded with more than 100 tons of coal travelling at about 96 kph.

Coaches and other wreckage were hurled into nearby fields by what is believed to have been the highest speed collision in the history of the rail network. The trains involved in the Paddington disaster collided at 200 kph.

The driver, a man aged 36 from Lincolnshire, is believed to have suffered only whiplash injuries. He was delivering a car from his home county to Manchester.

Police said the driver had called emergency services moments before the crash to tell them his vehicle was on the tracks.

A police operator heard the man shout "the train's coming" and then there was a bang, police said.

The GNER 225, travelling from Newcastle, smashed into the vehicle and came off the tracks.

Most casualties are thought to have been caused by the impact of the heavily laden coal train, which was travelling from Immingham on Humberside to Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire.

The Land Rover is understood to have left the motorway some distance before it veered off down the embankment, prompting the police to believe that the driver might have fallen asleep. Investigators have not discounted the possibility that the Land Rover might have suffered a blow-out.

The Highways Agency, which is responsible for motorways, was being asked why there were no barriers to prevent the car crashing off the motorway on to the track.

Officials said barriers were set up only within 30 metres of motorway road bridges. The vehicle left the road before it reached them.

It was the fourth fatal crash in three-and-a-half years on the rail network and will severely undermine a service that is still attempting to recover from previous disasters.

Visiting the crash site, John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, appeared visibly shocked.

"This is clearly a terrible tragedy," he said. "Our thoughts at the moment are with the injured and the relatives of those who died."

Mr Prescott later told a sombre House of Commons that he has asked for a report from the Health and Safety Executive to be ready within days.

Earlier in the House, Tony Blair and the Tory leader, William Hague, offered their sympathies. The Queen also issued a message of condolence.

By pure coincidence, the GNER locomotive involved in yesterday's disaster was the engine that was derailed at Hatfield last October in a crash that killed four people and plunged the industry into crisis.

GNER was at pains to point out that the locomotive was undamaged in the previous crash.

Part of the GNER train and the wrecked front end of the freight train slid into the back garden of a house. It destroyed a summer house, shed, workshop and caravan belonging to Peter Hintz, a retired power station worker.

For more than five hours after the accident, rescuers worked to free everyone from the wreck and a field hospital was set up in a barn at a nearby farm.

A fleet of ambulances and helicopters took the injured to hospitals in Leeds, Pontefract, York, Hull and Doncaster. The final survivor was released from the wreckage this morning.

As some of the victims began to be identified, towns and cities across the North-east and North Yorkshire where passengers had boarded began mourning their dead.

However, unlike in previous crashes at Clapham, Paddington and Hatfield, there was no one at whom to vent anger.

One survivor, Laurie Gunson, of York, who escaped serious injury, said: "I was at the counter of the buffet car when the crash happened. The carriage roof was torn off and I was flung down the length of the corridor and found myself on the floor together with a fellow passenger."

Shortly after arriving on the scene, Nigel Metcalfe, a spokesman for the North Yorkshire Ambulance Service, said: "It's like a scene from a bomb explosion. The carnage is appalling. We can hear mobile phones going off inside the mangled wreckage. Our crews had to carry patients about 100 yards across muddy fields to the field hospital where they could be picked up by ambulance."

One Railtrack official at the scene said: "This isn't a normal rail crash. This is a road traffic accident with terrible consequences. It's just an appalling series of coincidences."