The legal position regarding innovative treatments

Over the years since the establishment of railways the respective rights and duties of both railway and highway users have become well defined. These rights and duties arise from statute law (Acts of Parliament) and the common law (principles arising from court decisions). At common law there is a fundamental requirement that an authority, be it road, rail or other, act reasonably in any given situation. Unfounded fears of what may happen to an authority if it introduces a novel level crossing treatment may not only slow the introduction of life-protecting devices but may in the long term expose the authority, by virtue of its inaction, to the very kind of liability it believed it was avoiding. A number of risk engineering models are applied to the estimation of risk at railway level crossings. The use of fault free and event analysis, and outcome analysis provide a means of engineering risk in a predictive and rational manner, seen to be of particular importance in determining priorities for expenditure on risk control projects.