RED 69: Make that call: the importance of safety critical comms
All that said, some frontline rail staff avoid using SCC, thinking it’s too formal. Granted, it can feel uncomfortable talking that way at first, even silly. But it’s important to understand that SCC helps you make sure you say what you mean to say, and that the person at the other end gets it. It also makes you part of a wider community, part of the railway family, as SCC is the same whether you’re a shunter or signaller, driver, or dispatcher.
In RED 69, we look at what SCC is, what ‘good’ looks like, and what can happen when things go wrong.
Claire Repeti, Operations Manager at Rail Partners, and Barbara Smith, RSSB’s Principal Rail Operations Specialist, remind us that it’s all about ABCP, so keep it:
- accurate
- brief
- clear
- professional.
The dramatisation uses a fictional trespass incident to help demonstrate safety critical communication errors by including several mistakes. See if you can spot them all. If you can, you’ll be less likely to make them yourself.
Rule Book module TW1 gives the procedures for reporting trespassers and making and receiving emergency calls. Each scenario is different, so drivers can decide what level of GSM-R call to make. Usually, it will be either an urgent call or a railway emergency call (REC).
Urgent calls are between the signaller and one driver. They should be made when there is only one train involved in an incident. An emergency group call (or REC) is able to stop all trains within the cells around it. The call is broadcast to all of the GSM-R handsets in those cells. RECs should be made when all trains in that area need to be stopped immediately—like when there’s an obstruction on the line. If we’d had GSM-R and the ability to make a REC in 1984, the fatal collision at Polmont wouldn’t have happened.
Find out more information on when to use urgent calls and RECs in Rule Book module RS523. Over and out.
