I have been a train driver for 21 years. Last year I was involved in an incident at work where someone jumped in front of my train, and very sadly this incident resulted in a fatality. I am deliberately vague about the specific details of the incident to maintain anonymity. Having now returned to driving duties, I am writing this blog both to set out the impact of incidents faced by a substantial number of train drivers and to outline the steps on the way back to driving duties, which I hope will assist drivers who have gone through this experience. Below is my personal experience and I fully understand that everyone’s experience will be different.
When discussing the issue with a driver colleague who had a similar incident a couple of years ago, they described it as ‘joining the club that no-one wants to be in’. I found it hard to disagree.
The incident happened on a quiet platform and it seemed to take an age for station staff to turn up. In reality it was probably a very short length of time, but in the immediate aftermath of an incident, and actually for some time afterwards, your senses are hypervigilant. I had often thought about how I would react when/if the worst was to happen. Some people freeze, a totally understandable reaction, some people can function quite normally. I was the latter, the probable reason for that only coming out months later during counselling.
After carrying out the tasks required, both with the train and the public, pretty much in isolation, suddenly the cavalry turn up and you get to leave the platform. Incidents like this bring out the best and the worst in people. I am very grateful for the passenger who said they were staying with me until I was sure I was ok, and was deeply grateful when after requesting assistance for anyone with medical training, I had a paramedic, GP, mid-wife and vet volunteer their services. Unfortunately, there was also a passenger who wanted to film the scene. They were quickly shamed into putting their phone away.
I was then whisked away from the platform, accompanied by a Police Officer. I have heard about drivers being interviewed on the platform, but fortunately this did not happen to me. After checking on your wellbeing a fairly basic interview is conducted asking if in your view if it was a deliberate act or was there a suspicion of foul play and the actions you took and so on. The paramedic then arrived and asked if I was ok and then advised me, I think I may have asked, that the casualty was deceased.
This was not a huge surprise to me – and I think a self-defence mechanism had already kicked in and I was numbed to any emotions. I am finding it hard to describe how I felt. It is a bit of a cliché to say it felt surreal. I was very aware of what had happened, but at the same time I was almost able to detach myself from the experience. I did have thoughts, speaking to colleagues I believe this is very common, about whether I could have done anything more to prevent the incident.
I then spent some time with various railway staff, a mixture of information gathering and chit-chat, for as long as it took to remove the body from the area. Great care is taken to ensure that a driver is not exposed to seeing a casualty post-incident, although I was present at a previous incident, where due to the layout of the station this protocol was nearly breached. In my case, all went as planned and it was beneficial to have a chat about nothing in particular, and everything in particular, with people who understood the job. The ‘railway family’ is a close-knit bunch in times like this.
I thought I had better phone my wife to let her know what was going on. This is actually quite a difficult conversation as you are opening up to the ‘outside world’ and I wasn’t really sure how to say what had happened. My wife has said I sounded a bit weird, but was fairly matter of fact. I remember this was the first time I felt some emotion, but held it back.
A taxi was then arranged to get me back to my home depot, I declined the suggestion to go back onto the platform where the incident happened and travel back on a train. I then met up with a couple of drivers and admin staff and had very ‘normal’ conversations, although of course I wasn’t feeling very normal. Then a ‘trauma support’ colleague arrived. Our train company have drivers who are also trained trauma support volunteers. I had known this person for a number of years, but apart from that it was a huge benefit to talk about the event with someone who knows your job inside out and has a deep understanding of what you have been through. After a long discussion, we took another taxi to where my car was parked, and after again being asked if I was ok to drive the drive home, which was uneventful and long due to the rush hour traffic. Was I fit to drive? Yes, I believe so otherwise I would not have got into the car. However, I should point out there is no expectation that you have to drive, no matter how far away you live.
I remember getting home and again not being sure what to say. The world of work had spilled over into my home life and I remember being almost embarrassed about what had happened to me. Anyway, I spoke to my daughter who I reassured that I was okay. To be fair she didn’t seem overly concerned, that’s teenage children for you! I did end up talking through the whole incident with my wife. Again, it was like talking about an incident that I wasn’t personally involved in – the detachment process had already started.
I never had any bad dreams following the incident, but that first night and for a number of subsequent nights before going to sleep, I would involuntarily replay the incident in my head, like a three-second video reel, again and again until I eventually went to sleep. Sleep would be an issue over the following weeks.
After a couple of days, I called into work and set up contact arrangements. This forms part of the ‘duty of care’ for the company to their staff and also allows the driver to update management on progress. The frequency of contact is mutually agreed upon, and we arranged a weekly call-up. On reflection, I think fortnightly would have been sufficient bearing in mind the length of time I was likely to be off, and the calls did get a bit ‘samey’ but at the same time, some contact from the workplace is probably beneficial to make the eventual return a little easier.
I also called my GP on the same day, and I was lucky to get through to a Doctor who had dealt with drivers who had experienced a fatality at work. Therefore, I didn’t need to justify how I felt and I was signed off for an initial period of four weeks. The GP told me quite strongly that I was not ill and to feel no guilt about “doing things you enjoy”. I must admit images of lazy days in a beer garden did spring into my mind until the GP reminded me to go easy on any self-medication!
Train drivers, quite rightly, are governed by very strict restrictions around alcohol. The ‘limit’ for train drivers is a third of the UK drink drive limit, so effectively it is a ‘zero tolerance’ policy. This can create a binge drinking culture as there are probably no more than a couple of days in any week where it is permissible to consume alcohol. Did I drink a bit more while I was off? Yes. Was this a result of the trauma of the incident? I do not think so.
How did I feel? My sleeping was quite poor, and I am told I was rather grumpy (more than usual) but although (or perhaps because) things still seemed rather surreal, I was not openly emotional. In fact, it was not until some weeks later that I was able to be emotional about the incident. The reasons for this emotional detachment would become apparent during counselling.
There has been a recent change, in our company at least, in the approach to counselling following a traumatic incident. This is now delayed until around four weeks after the date of the incident. I cannot recall the exact reasons for this, but they seemed to make sense at the time. The GP was aware of this, and this was one of the reasons for the length of the initial fit-note.
Although I had made a statement to the police at the time, I was contacted again to make a further, more detailed statement for the Coroner’s Inquest. I must admit this did create some anxiety at the time, as the initial rather formal way this was approached led me to believe that I may have done something wrong. However, while talking through the incident on someone else’s terms was unsettling, when it came to the interview, which took place over the phone around two weeks after the incident, the approach of the Officer taking the statement was formal, but empathetic. I avoided going anywhere near a railway platform for a few weeks, but when I was invited out for some drinks with friends, I realised there was no way around this. I have to say the first time on a platform post-incident was for me a very unsettling experience.
I stood as far away from the platform edge as possible, and replayed the incident in my head as the train entered the platform. I was definitely ready for a drink when I got to the pub. While particularly unpleasant, it was useful ‘exposure’ to an environment similar to where my incident happened.
Unfortunately, there is no getting around the fact that you do eventually have to put yourself in situations where you may feel intensely uncomfortable. My trip out for the pub crawl was the first small, but important step. It was definitely a lot easier on the way back home!
Due to a couple of issues, my counselling ended up starting around eight weeks after the incident. I was very keen to get started, although I had heard from other drivers who had gone through counselling that it can be pretty full on.
The start of counselling does go around the houses a bit and there are a lot of questionnaires to answer. These are to gauge your current state of mind and the most appropriate type of treatment. For anyone who undertakes counselling in the future, this part may seem a little irrelevant, but it is an important marker as the scorecards created will be used at a later stage to assess progress.
The counselling soon progresses to an open discussion about your feelings and any past traumatic events. I have discussed events in my childhood in a previous blog: https://julianvaughan.blog/2019/08/02/memories-or-dreams/ and aspects of this were discussed during the counselling. We talked about how coping mechanisms to deal with situations that arose in my childhood (blocking out emotion, detachment from events) were used to cope with the trauma resulting from my recent incident.
This was a double-edged sword, as while it made me able to function well in the immediate aftermath of the incident, it meant an emotional disconnection with the incident itself. In retrospect, I wish I had written full notes during my counselling, as it would have informed this blog far better, but the above was the general thrust of the conversations we had in this area.
Like I say in my previous blog, I have never attempted to blame current issues on past events, I think that is an easy get out. However, I accept that it is naive to think that past events do not impact you, sometimes quite profoundly. One of the issues raised during the counselling was that whenever my wife or daughter left the house, I would have the strongest feelings that I would never see them again, and I would have to look out the house one more time to catch another glimpse to ‘make it okay’. This issue and others were discussed during counselling and it ended up being more than just a fix for the recent incident.
As the counselling progressed further we discussed how a traumatic event can impact us, our mental and physical reactions to that and how to practice meditation. This meditation process was a far more effective one than one I realised I had been using for many years – but had never thought of as meditation. While for some meditation may bring up images of incense burners and ‘new age’ hippiness, I can’t recommend it highly enough for resetting the mind.
My counsellor had discussed their concern about how I had an emotional disconnection with the events that happened to me and meditation was the means by which we got to the point where I went through the incident step by step at an emotional rather than physical level. I sat down and we went through the meditation process to get to a relaxed state and then I talked through the incident from start to finish, describing my emotions at each step of the way. I find it impossible to describe my feelings after this process, but it had definitely unlocked something and I was quite discombobulated – I cannot think of a better word! It was very soon after this that for the first time I cried (a lot) about the incident and this was definitely a release that I needed.
This process was repeated, both on my own and during the counselling and while unpleasant, it certainly helped. We then discussed my avoidance behaviour and went on to start the process of exposure to the environment where the incident had happened.
Before I move onto this I think it is worth discussing how people around you act following an event like this. Some will want to know all the details, including the gory ones, and some won’t know what to say, so will avoid the subject completely. Personally, and I must stress that there will be many different approaches to this, I was happy to discuss the events, as in the early stages it was like it had happened to someone else anyway. However, I did send out group texts saying that I am happy to talk about it, but equally happy NOT to talk about it, I just wanted people to be normal about me, and not feel that they had to pussy foot around me. Saying that I think I was a bit difficult to live with at home for a while.
The ’exposure’ aspect of the therapy was very much taken at my pace. I have to say that at no time did my company put me under any pressure to return to work. However, there is an aspect of the longer you leave it the harder it becomes, so there is a balance to be struck. I started by just turning up at the work environment and saying hello to work colleagues, then riding up and down the line as a passenger.
Perhaps the hardest part was visiting the platform where the incident happened. I spoke to the station staff first and told them what I was up to and then sat down on the platform. This was a bit grim, and the memories did come flooding back. On the second visit a rather bizarre event happened. A passenger turned up on the platform and walked past me. I thought this person had a very strong resemblance to the one who jumped in front of my train, but I brushed this off as reading too much into it. The passenger then walked to the exact point where the incident happened and started mumbling to themselves and shuffling about. Alarm bells started ringing in my head and I couldn’t quite believe what was happening as I thought the event was about to repeat itself. Nothing happened of course, but I decided that was enough for the day, I had been there about 30 minutes, and I got on the next train glad to get out of there.
While deeply unpleasant, this was actually the sort of exposure I needed. This then progressed to being on the front of a train sitting next to the driver for short spells but not through the incident station, then going through the station. Of course, at some point you have to take the plunge and I went out with an Instructor Operator alongside me while I drove the train, first of all avoiding that particular station and then driving through the station for the first time and after doing this a few times, driving through the incident station with no-one else in the cab, but with the Instructor Operator just behind the door in case anything untoward happened.
All the above happened in stages, and I was left to my own devices about how long each stage took. How did it feel going through the station? Well, you don’t feel great, but the repeated exposure does help. You do have flashbacks to the incident, I still do to this day, but not in a debilitating way.
To give an idea of the timescales involved, it was around four months from the date of the incident until I was back driving a train on my own, although I actually returned to work after three months. Some take longer to return, some are back sooner, and there are rare occasions where drivers do not get on the front of a train again.
Some people asked me if I was angry with the person involved, or said what a selfish act it was. I felt no anger at all, I just think what a desperate state the person must have been to take that action and how sad it is that they felt there was no alternative.
I think most people would describe me as a steady type, reliable, a little reticent, and not prone to emotional outbursts, although the reality is that I am very emotional. I recently read a book about disaster planning, a Sunday Times bestseller, and there was a passage about instinct and intuition in relation to accidents. I am slightly reluctant to mention this, but reading this book has given me the confidence to say it. I did have a very strong sense on the morning of the incident that something like what subsequently took place was about to happen. Further to this, just before my final train journey of the day on which the incident happened I listened to a voicemail, but I didn’t have time to call back. I would have to wait an hour before I could return the call, and I remember thinking to myself I hope nothing bad happens on this last trip – by this I meant someone jumping in front of my train. I have no rational explanation for this, it was not a post-incident reaction.
I found my return to normal driving duties tiring. Not unexpected of course, as I had had an extended break and I suspect it was quite draining emotionally, although I didn’t feel that consciously, other than when driving through the station where the incident happened. One behaviour I noticed was that, rather than feeling that the worst was going to happen, I actually felt NOTHING could happen to me. I very quickly had to adjust that mindset and had a strong word with myself saying that I have to be just as aware of the potential for another safety-related incident and I do not have a protective shield that prevents future incidents.
I have written this some months after the events and the subsequent counselling as I didn’t want to write while I was still in ‘recovery’ mode. I did suffer from a level of anxiety and generally feeling down when I returned to driving, but that has since passed. The delay does mean that I am vaguer on some of the details than I would like to be. What I can say with clarity is that while it can be a difficult journey, you can absolutely get through it.
Thank you to all the people that helped me along the way; the extended railway family, of all grades, my friends outside of work and my ‘home’ family, both for the hugs and kind words and also those that took the piss out of me, as usual. All of this helped me a great deal. A massive thanks to my Counsellor, my trauma support representative and the passenger on my train who in the immediate aftermath of the incident stayed with me to make sure I was okay. I will always remember that kindness, and I hope I would do the same for someone else in the situation I found myself in.
Finally, someone chose to end their life on that day, and my train was their means to achieve that aim. My thoughts are with all those impacted by the tragic events of that day. If you think somebody needs help, trust your instincts and start a conversation. Below are some links on how to help someone who is having suicidal thoughts and how just a few words can save someone’s life.
Samaritans: ‘Small Talk Saves Lives’: https://youtu.be/7iX916-AS-w?si=3n1NMB3KLaBn4zoj
Mind: Supporting someone who feels suicidal: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/helping-someone-else/supporting-someone-who-feels-suicidal/talking-about-suicidal-feelings/
Samaritans: Supporting someone with suicidal thoughts: https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/if-youre-worried-about-someone-else/supporting-someone-suicidal-thoughts/
If you need help, phone the Samaritans on 116 123 at any time of day or night.
Julian Vaughan
16th June 2024
Julian Vaughan 