Blackpool Transport have reiterated the need to be careful in the vicinity of the tramway following an incident which saw a 15 year old boy taken to hospital. The incident took place on Saturday 12th July at Harrow Place tramstop just before 1130 when the teenager was crossing the tracks with Blackpool Transport now undertaking an investigation into what happened.
The Ambulance service – including Air Ambulance – and Fire service were called to the incident and it took approximately 15 minutes to free the boy who had become trapped underneath the front of the tram. He was then taken by Air Ambulance to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool to undergo treatment for head injuries.
The design of Blackpool’s Flexity2 trams was said help the rescue of the boy as although he was trapped underneath the front of the tram he was clear of the bogies.
Bob Mason, director of delivery at Blackpool Transport, commented: “These are modern trams that meet the highest safety standards and there is protection in front of the wheels to stop anyone from going underneath them. We can’t stress enough that pedestrians and cyclists need to be aware we’ve got trams operating up and down the Prom.”
What ‘bogies?’ Those nasty plastic catterpillars are more like 3x 4 wheelers joined together.
Also what is a ‘director of delivery?’ Whoever he is, if he works for BT he should know every tram in the last 100 plus years has something infront of the wheels to stop pedestrians getting chopped up. In the good old days these consisted of a folding gate and a tray. when someone fell under a tram they pushed the gate back, which caused a lifeguard tray to drop infront of the wheelsand safely scoop up the unfortunate individual. However modern trams tend to just have a flexibly mounted board at 45 degrees ahead of the wheels. The idea being that when they get a ‘one under’ the body pushes the board from 45 degrees to vertical and the even more unfortunate individual gets rolled along the road surface!
Despite what Bob says, having inspected both types closely, I know which I’d rather fall infront of!
Unlike most multi section trams, the Flexity 2 design does infact have propper bogies which rotate relative to their respective body sections.
No where in the statement does it say or even imply that the old trams didn’t have any form of life guard in front of the wheels. As for which is the better to fall in front of, I’d rather not either thanks, and that is the sentiment of the statement – to encourage people not to put themselves at risk of experiencing an encounter with any form of lifeguard!
Wasn’t aware that the Blackpool trams were made out of plastic, I am sure that despite a number of GRP panels the metal content must be quite high!
Yet again I am amazed at why the trams have to defend themselves when other road vehicles seem to be able to mow people down with impunity!
But surely the first line of defence would be not to put yourself in danger in the first place and as Paul said I would rather not test the efficiency of any lifeguard!
Because accidents involving rail vehicles are far less common than those involving road vehicles, the media reports all rail-related accidents, often in a sensationalist way. Car, bus and coach crashes do not attract minute attention by the media, whereas rail accidents do.