Rail firm fined £1m over train passenger's death
When a teenage woman sustained a fatal accident after placing her head outside a droplight window, a major rail operator was fined £1 million for breaching health and safety legislation. Bethan Roper, 28, was killed on a Great Western Railway (GWR) train near Twerton in Bath on December 1, 2018, when her head collided with a tree branch. GWR was convicted of droplight windows but had not yet implemented steps taken in a risk analysis conducted two months before Ms Roper's death, according to regulators. Since pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching health and safety, GWR was fined and also ordered to pay £78,000.
ORR's chief inspector of railways Richard Hines said. "Her death was preventable, and it highlighted the importance for train operators to anticipate risks and respond quickly when safety concerns are made to keep their passengers safe. Ms Roper, a Penarth resident, served for the Welsh Refugee Council and chaired the Cardiff West branch of Socialist Party Wales. An inquest held in 2021 found she was returning home from a Christmas shopping trip in Bath and was inebriated when she boarded the train.Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Bethan Roper,
Investigators told the inquest that a yellow warning label above the window containing the words
was an ineffective deterrent. Ms Roper's death related to a similar incident in 2016 in which a passenger died near Balham, south London, prompting the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) to release safety guidelines in May 2017. Although GWR did not complete a written risk report until September 2017, the report found droplight windows to be one of the most significant passenger safety risks. The ORR found the report to be ineffective and notified GWR about its suspicions.Caution do not lean out of the window when the train is moving
However, the report was not updated, and GWR's attempts to minimize the risk were not taken before the 2018 deadly accident. Since Ms Roper's death, new steps have been introduced throughout the rail industry to discourage passengers from leaning out of droplight windows. Since being out of service or equipped with engineering controls to prevent windows from being opened when trains are moving, trains with such windows have been out of operation. The ORR said it embraced steps taken by GWR and the wider industry to minimize risk.
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