Tess de la Mare<\/span>West of England<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n A major rail operator has been fined \u00a31m for breaching health and safety law when a young woman suffered a fatal injury after placing her head outside a droplight window.<\/p>\n Bethan Roper, 28, was killed on a Great Western Railway (GWR) train near Twerton in Bath on 1 December 2018 when her head struck a tree branch.<\/p>\n Regulator the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) prosecuted GWR on the grounds it was aware of the issue of droplight windows, and had not yet implemented steps identified in a risk assessment undertaken two months before Ms Roper’s death.<\/p>\n GWR was fined and also ordered to pay \u00a378,000 after pleading guilty to two counts of breaching health and safety law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Richard Hines, ORR’s chief inspector of railways, said: “Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Bethan Roper.<\/p>\n “Her death was a preventable tragedy that highlights the need for train operators to proactively manage risks and act swiftly when safety recommendations are made to keep their passengers safe.”<\/p>\n Ms Roper, from Penarth in Wales, worked for the Welsh Refugee Council, was a Unite union convener and also chaired the Cardiff West branch of Socialist Party Wales.<\/p>\n She had been returning home from a Christmas shopping trip in Bath and was intoxicated when she boarded the train, an inquest held in 2021 heard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Investigators told the inquest a yellow warning label above the window bearing the words ‘Caution do not lean out of window when train is moving’ was an insufficient deterrent.<\/p>\n Ms Roper’s death echoed a similar incident in 2016 in which a passenger died near Balham, south London, resulting in the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) issuing safety recommendations in May 2017.<\/p>\n GWR did not produce a written risk assessment until September 2017, but that assessment found droplight windows to be one of the most significant passenger safety risks.<\/p>\n The ORR found the assessment to be insufficient and wrote to GWR about its concerns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n However the assessment was not revised, and the actions GWR had set out to reduce the risk were not implemented before the fatal accident of 2018, the ORR said.<\/p>\n Since Ms Roper’s death, measures have been introduced across the rail industry to prevent passengers leaning out of droplight windows.<\/p>\n Trains with such windows have since been withdrawn from service or fitted with engineering controls to prevent windows being opened while trains are moving.<\/p>\n The ORR said it welcomed actions taken by GWR and the wider industry to reduce risk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"PA](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/7f2a\/live\/7f80e460-a104-11f0-ac34-1b87a37e0e9a.jpg.webp\")
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