POLAND is observing a second day of national mourning after the country's worst rail disaster in over 20 years on Saturday. Two trains collided on the Warsaw-Cracow line, killing 16 people and injuring 58. A preliminary investigation suggests that the crash may have been caused by human error rather than faulty infrastructure. A distraught signalman has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where doctors are holding off the police.
Whether or not it turns out that this individual was negligent, there are larger questions for Poland's authorities to answer. Does railway management instil diligence in its employees? Are staff thoroughly tested for their adherence to safety protocol? In its rush to spend European Union funds on the country's communications network ahead of this summer's Euro 2012 football tournament, is Poland's transport ministry neglecting human capital, and its duty of care?
The transport minister, Slawomir Nowak, has been quick to anticipate this last question. "The train system—not only in Poland but all of Europe—is still very safe," he has said.
Mr Nowak is right. The relative safety of rail travel in Poland is perhaps best illustrated by comparing it to the deadly roads in the country. Daily road death tolls vary, of course, but 16 is not at all uncommon.
On a day when we pause to reflect on a tragedy, the big picture is important. Around 4,000 people are killed a year on Polish roads. The death rate is twice as high as the EU average. But car crashes make the news only when there is a sensational disaster.
No serious political attempt has been made to tackle the problem. In a country that receives more cash from Brussels than any other to improve its transport system, that can and should change. Someone should step forward to take the lead.
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Let me add one little detail to the last part of the entry.
The number of cars in Poland almost doubled in the last 5 years while the number of accidents didn't - the highest points were in the past, mainly in the 1990s.
It is always easier to say that NOTHING was done, but is not the case, however the changes will take more than a few years - probably only recently cars ceased to be a symbol of relative prosperity and attitudes of many drivers should eventually change.
Another thing is the effect of transport vehicles, mainly trucks which are dribving through Poland as a main transit country in this part of Europe. Recently finished motorways should decrease the number of accidents caused by reckless drivers employed by transport companies - which also includes foreigners, also from former Soviet countries.
There are several factors to consider and the brighter points in the picture are
- considerably better roads,
- the fact that the quality of cars should start improving more than their quantity,
- better emergency response time and its quality lowering number of deaths,
- considerably better management, especially in towns and in their neighbourhood,
- considerably lower alcohol consumption (it is around the Eu avarage) which also influences the number of drunk drivers,
The main thing is pretty much still about human attitude because that even with much better infrastructure has to change.
The number one killer of humanity is not cancer nor heart attack but a car, and especially so in Poland. One may find this information quite interesting, if not shocking, that an average bus driver in Poland earns as much as ... 6PLN per one hour work, which is roughly 2 dollars per hour. The state is simply killing public bus transport in Poland, which is the opposite to what the other developed countries are doing (go to Oslo and try to find some private car there). The only alternative to people is to buy their own cars which they very often can't afford so they buy some second hand cars which are virtually falling apart on Polish roads.
The crash was caused by both human error and the faulty infrastructure. Almost all railway traffic in Poland is being directed by means of an alarm system (read: manual system). Evidently they are having huge, huge problem how to explain this tragedy to the world. In the first place why there are still problems with the automatic, fully computerized system so that signalmen must still regulate by hand all the movement of the trains on a regular basis in Poland? What's more, why were the innumerable public protests, appeals, and warnings constantly sent by the signalmen so outragesly neglected by the government for such a long time in Poland? Last but not least, shouldn't by any chance Mr Sławomir Nowak have resigned or temporariry suspended his duties as a trasport and infrastruceture minister in Polish government for the time of some 100% impartial and objective examination of the possible malpractices in his ministry? Sorry, but now that he stays on everybody can claim that he exerts his influence over the entire investigation into this tragedy, maybe he is trying to cover up his own mistakes as a minister, who knows? At any rate, noone at their senses can reasonably argue that now as he stays on he is not a judge of his own case in front of the Polish judiciary and this is taking place in a law abiding country which is a member of the European Community.
I appeal to the world public opinion to exert pressure on the Polish government to do something to reinstitute Transparency International (TI) in Poland. This organisation is like a thermometer for the ill person. Unfortunately, in the case of Poland the thermometer was adamant to display unfavourable results so they simply got rid of it from Poland three months ago. Noone in Poland is even crying crocodile tears that this anti-corruption organisation had to leave Poland. How can the world main-stream media even dare to praise Mr Tusk and his government is beyond my ken.
I was warning the world opinion here in one of my comments in December last year that things are getting worse and worse in Poland when I reported the disappearance of Tranparency International in Poland. There is deep silence about this organization in Polish media now, nobody mentions the problem. At the same time we can see on the daily basis how Polish economy is corrupted, how Polish oligarchs managed to penetrate the government and other important state institutions in Poland. Contaminated salt scandal and railway collision are just recent examples of this. Unless the world exerts some pressure on Poland we would never see Transparency Intl. reinstituted in Mr Tusk's Poland and similar tragedies are bound to happen more and more often. HELP WORLD, because we ordinary people in Poland are unable to do anything in this respect (at least stop praising Mr Tusk and his entrepreneurially oriented government on each and every occasion because they don't deserve it).
No matter how sad train accidents are, they just happen everywhere sometimes - remember the collapse of the bridge under repair in Studénka or the big train crash in Eschede. So it's hard to eliminate them entirely.
But what we should be mercilessly fighting against is when unscrupulous greedy entrepreneurs deliberately put in danger health of hundreds of thousands of citizens only to make bigger profits - like raw deals with the toxic coal slurry that was eventually sold to common consumers as a regular fuel or the case of the de-icing technical salt being sold to food processing industry. Even in China, managers of the dairy that enriched milk with toxic proteins were sentenced to death. Therefore it would be pity if we tolerated these practices on the common EU market... This is the direction that journalists should focus their attention!
Take away limited liability shield from the owners, and then deal with it.
The only problem with the current Polish government being that Mr Tusk is a blue eyed boy in the world media today. Managers responsible for the presence of toxins in milk may be put to death in China, but in Poland people responsible for similar crimes go unpunished because the system in Poland is ineffective and oligarchs can do whatever they wish, they may even exert psychological pressure on the pilot to fly when weather conditions and simple logic tells one to wait (Smoleńsk 2010). Especially this last thing should be taken as a serious warning for these senseless rulers of Poland, namely that they are running a huge risk of simply outsmarting themselves when they ignore basic safety precautions in such matters as transport and food.
Limited liability is applicable to the financial situation of the company, not violating of food-processing laws and laws for dealing with toxic materials.
It would best if voice of conscience worked in the first place, or at least education or religion (fear from going to hell in afterlife ;-). If all these preventive measures fail, then obviously inspections and supervisions with deterrent repressions must be applied because protection of health of citizens should be priority.
Well, the various agricultural, toxic-waste, food-processing and consumer-protection supervisory bodies should work fairly independently on top-level national political representation.
Moreover, note that the coal slurry originated in Czech part of Silesia and, on the other hand, around 1/3 of food-production in supermarket chains in the Czech Republic is imported from Polish food-processing companies.
Thus, these cases (as well as previous cases like last summer cucumber or contaminated fodder issues in Germany) prove that supervision is not purely national issue anymore but that liberalized single EU market cannot work without harmonized legislation and coordinated (if not unified) supervision because it affects health of potentially all EU citizens. Thus, it should be primarily impetus for EC.
Two years ago I was talking to a Czech who was praising Polish food, which was a surprise to me. As to EU (international) supervision about which you write the government in Poland today is involved in the opposite exercise, namely they do their best so that all the international supervisory bodies leave Poland. Last example of this took place last November, when Transparency International just simply had to retreat from Poland due to extremely unfovourable conditions for their work here in Poland (they couldn't find anyone who would be unafraid of various very influential pseudo-business lobbies in Poland; people are blackmailed and intimidated to a much greater extent in Poland than in other European countries).
The limited liability umbrella permits the owners (ie ultimately responsible) to get away from accepting all losses caused by their businesses. If there is no limited liability, there would have been so much lesser risk that Bhopal would have happened. It is about obligation to cover losses, first of all, and not about being put into jail for the actions of management that you hire and accept reckless risk taking.
The fact is that the Polish railways network has been grossly underinvested for well over 30 years. In an attempt to modernise the service by introducing "competition" into the State owned monolith, over a decade ago the PKP was split up with a holding company and over 60 subsidiaries, all at each others' throats competing for passenger and freight traffic. The result is an organisational chaos with very frequent timetable changes. The trains themselves are being modernised but the average age of the rolling stock is still well over 30 years!
The physical infrastructure network was itself hived off into a seperate entity: PKP-PKL, which company employs 47000 persons. It has been currently spending just over a billion zloty (250 million EUR or 300 million USD!) a year on maintenance, repairs and network upgrades. The train companies are buying new trains but they have to run on old, delapidated lines. The major problem is that PKP-PKL has no real experience in major infrastructure project management as due to the lack of monies in the past 30 years little such was done. More qualified engineers are retiring then are being trained and introduced into the system. Thus projects that should take a maximum 2 years are taking well over a decade! Furthermore, of all the monies received/allocated from the EU infrastructure funds for the railways, only 3% has been used to date, against nearly 100% for roads. There is a major risk that these monies will in fact have to be returned to Brussels.
So the major ongoing failure in the Polish rail service is one of many years of incompetent systemic management. The relevant government agencies are also ineptly led. Majbe the new Minister for transport, Mr Nowak and his rail deputy will finally manage to get PKP-PKL moving.
The accident that occurred was caused by human failure: deliberate overriding of the automatic safety system. Poland's railways are relatively safe: the majority of casualties are caused by reckless car drivers being hit by trains at unguarded level crossings plus deliberate suicides. I myself frequently travel by train in Poland in preference to driving simply because its cheaper, faster and a lot, lot safer. If you want to experience high risk reckless and dangerous driving in Europe, try any of Poland's roads: I have even witnessed public buses "jumping the red light" at intersections, and the number of drunken drivers is horrendous!
I wish Brussels waited for the reinstitution of the Transparency International branch in Poland before allocating even those 3% of funds for Polish railways. I just don't want my country to follow the Greek path. Let me remind everybody that the whole problem in Greece started with the huge misappropriation of EU funds over the period of many years there. We too have oligarchs in Poland who just don't like EU transparency procedures. They behave like an infantile patient: since they have a fever so they must break the thermometer and the fever will be miraculously over; they accidentally hit themselves against the wall so the wall must have stood in the wrong place and the wall is responsible for the bruise on their head, not them.
Quote: Does railway management instil diligence in its employees? Are staff thoroughly tested for their adherence to safety protocol? In its rush to spend European Union funds on the country's communications network ahead of this summer's Euro 2012 football tournament, is Poland's transport ministry neglecting human capital, and its duty of care?
Very good questions. Poland’s infrastructure policy has become too market-liberal. In the country I live in, a horrific train crash killed hundreds of commuters a few years ago and a nuclear power plant disaster scattered the broad area with radioactive particles last year due to the same reason, i.e. excessive market-liberalisation which has left the facilities increasingly dilapidated, kept systemic flaws neglected and made the stuff more and more demanded – in favour of short-term or microeconomic gains. (Due to its business competition with its rival train companies running almost parallel with it, the train company had had to speed up its commuter trains on the line without affording the latest automatic train-speed control system, resulting in demanding on-the-job efforts of the train drivers to some unrealistic extent and thus overspeeding the train which derailed at a tight curve. The electric power company, increasingly introducing the market principle while aware of the systemic flaws of the nuclear reactors with the diesel generators for their emergency cooling systems set underground despite the risk of their getting drenched by a tsunami, had made itself unable to conduct costly projects to scrap the reactors and build new safer reactors.) The present excessive market-liberal agenda is definitely as inappropriate for Poland as the old statist agenda used to be.
Let me defend Poland from now on. (I am not a Pole despite my pseudonym.) I find the above poor situation coming from the Ordoliberal market-liberal agenda of the European Union which is currently threatening that it will stop granting the cash from Brussels unless Poland trims its budget deficit to 3% of its GDP by this year, and this anti-Harvey Road inelasticity predestines Poland to both what items should be cut and what items the EU grants should be directed to. The whole system enables no serious political attempt to tackle the whole of the problem from within Poland. In a country that receives more cash from Brussels than any other to improve its transport system, that cannot change while it should. No one can step forward to take the lead while someone should indeed. On a market-liberal agenda – Ordoliberal on the EU level and New Liberal on the (developing) member-state level, only on-the-job negligence is blamed and on-the-job efforts demanded every time such a tragedy occurs, resulting in a chain of tragedies of the same kind.
My conclusion: An on-the-job negligence may be the direct cause of this train crash, but the whole of the haphazardly market-liberal framework must be the underlying cause. Every day will become a national mourning day in the long run. Trains in Poland safe during the Euro2012? Maybe.
Not that I follow your lenghty self-confessions here or elsewhere... But one cannot see the world in a grimmer dawn than you do. Poland should do everything in the exactly opposite way than you whine this time. That is, de-regulate from the State, privatise and liberalise at the same time. The problem with the Polish railways is that they are under a greenhouse yet, shielded from the market forces that fellows like you are so much afraid. Do you get a shiver down your spine when you read of privately-owned nuclear power stations? And why airlines should be private? Why banks are not state-owned? I'd think a bakery round the corner should be much more heavily regulated, since I did not like my croissant last time I drop in there... You made my day, anyway.
Interesting that you insist so much on the deregulation of the railways, considering the disastrous score of train crashes and derailings suffered by such fully privatized operators as former British Rail. Better management, modernization and reliablity are not necessarily synonymous to privatization.
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I find your mantra of deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation to be of no practical use. The real world is not made that simple, and the political conundrum between statism and market-liberalism is merely fruitless.
In his famous criticism of Friedrich von Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom’, George Orwell, who had focused attention to the danger of statism in ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’, emphasised the danger of ‘free’ market-competition causing a tyranny worse than the tyranny of statism due to the fact that markets are more irresponsible than the State.
Contrary to haphazard idealism, i.e. market-liberalisation with opportunistic central controls, which you may be following, a comprehensive socialisation is needed. This, however, should be discriminated from what you call socialism. Of his own theory of employment, interest and money, John M Keynes says, “ In some other respects the foregoing theory is moderately conservative in its implications. For whilst it indicates the vital importance of establishing certain central controls in matters which are now left in the main to individual initiative, there are wide fields of activity which are unaffected. The State will have to exercise a guiding influence on the propensity to consume partly through its scheme of taxation, partly by fixing the rate of interest, and partly, perhaps, in other ways. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the influence of banking policy on the rate of interest will be sufficient by itself to determine an optimum rate of investment. I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment; though this need not exclude all manner of compromises and of devices by which public authority will co-operate with private initiative. But beyond this no obvious case is made out for a system of State Socialism which would embrace most of the economic life of the community. It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary. Moreover, the necessary measures of socialisation can be introduced gradually and without a break in the general traditions of society.”
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Provided that full employment requires the state free from tragic accidents, we should pursue ‘certain central controls in matters which are now left in the main to individual initiative’ or seek ‘devices by which public authority will co-operate with private initiative’.
The train crash and nuclear disaster I cited in my previous post occurred in this very midst of the process when the railway operation and power supply had respectively become excessively haphazardly privatised, deregulated and liberalised. While the reason why the private railway operator, which had been established out of the state-owned railway enterprise that had once existed, that caused the tragedy had not been able to purchase the latest automatic train control device for the curve in question has already been found to be the then escalating competition – for faster, denser, more punctual, friendlier and cheaper railway operations, i.e. better services – with its rival commuter lines and the means of road transport, a private railway operator, which had also been established out of the same state enterprise, that operates in another region had equipped every single point with a latent danger with the device – thanks to its financial abundance due to its approximation to monopoly along its operating lines in view of urban commuting, where the ‘central controls’ or ‘devices by which public authority’ should ‘co-operate with private initiative’ had worked effectively.
In case of the Polish railway, it is clear that ‘central controls’ or ‘devices by which public authority’ should ‘co-operate with private initiative’ have not been organised well while in many cases the operators remain monopolistic along their operating lines. I find it to be because of the socioeconomic framework – New Liberal on the state level – focuses so much on private initiative in the process of their competition with its rivalrous means of road transport that the cooperation between private initiative and public authority or central controls are greatly overlooked in the sense of ‘comprehensive socialisation of investment’.
It's not the point that the British railways are private and you are not happy with their service, schedule, or safety (they would not be any better if they are nationalised, IMHO). The point is that Poland needs another Leszek, and he cannot come too soon. Instead, the country had been hijacked by the Twins, and now struggles with the spineless (read: ultimately leftist) agenda of the so-called liberals as well as prewar-esque nationalism of the likes of dear Radek who (ie Donald and Ko) clearly lack vision and guts to kick-start so much talked-about reforms. PS Yes, I'd vote Ron Paul, if that was your implicit question.
'Greenhouse' is a tool and 'market' is a tool and they should be reasonably used to the benefit, and not to the detriment of the human race. Yes, I do get a shiver down my spine when I read of privetely-owned nuclear power stations, and do you know why? Because I know that all the institutions whose role it is to control other institutions should be independent of the market. Any inspector should be interested in the proper functioning of a thing which s/he examines and not in the profit from the commercial fee that he gets from his/her client. Otherwise this client will start looking for such an inspector who will look the other way and overlook evident, dangerous occurrencies taking place in the thing which he is supposed to minutely examine.
The popped one in Fukushima has been both privately owned and privately run for years.
CEO Shimizu had been actively introducing the market-principle into the enterprise further than his predecessors used to, eventually resulting in completely neglecting the popped one's unique structure that the generators for the emergency cooling system had been set underground due to the contract with the designer General Electric - in his pursuit of profits. It is unfair to blame Shimizu only, because his failure comes from the country's market-liberal grand ageda on electric supply.
There are things which are functioning the best if we liberalize them and let the free market forces to act (laissez faire) and there are things which simply must not be regulated by the market, e.g. nuclear energy.Drive for profit may make people totatally blinded and they may not see the dangers imvolved in their business.
In agreement with your opinion, let me add that we shouldn’t expect to have clear criteria what to privatise or liberalise and what to regulate. We don’t know for sure what portfolio is the most efficient for a long term. Whether market-liberal or statist, a radical change in the socioeconomic framework leads to a disastrous consequence in the long run. A right government is a government that wouldn’t rush into either of the directions unless it is dealing with an issue that is practically on a micro-economic level. That is why a government should proceed gradually and discreetly in the context of a comprehensive socialisation of investment, i.e. managed capitalism (not communism).
International law enforcement should also help. More and more often I think about the idea put forward by prof. Zygmund Bauman, namely that the current conditions of mankind necessitate the formation of some major, supranational government of the entire planet. He suggested this idea as the only means to preserve the environment as it is becoming impossible to counteract natural disasters in the situation where some countries may decide not to follow suit and nothing can be done about it. It is enough for one huge country like China or USA to ignore e.g. 'Kyoto Agreement' and there's no way to do anything about it.
EVERYTHING IS OK! The fact that day earlier a train got on the wrong track and had to go back is just a coincidence! Do not criticise current government, or the fascist party PiS may come to rule! NOTHING IS WRONG! EVERYTHING IS OK IN POLAND! CARRY ON!
Again, yet another proof that Mr Sławomir Nowak should have suspended his duties as a minister of transport, at least for a time when the matter is being examined by some independent group of experts. Now one may suspect him of trying to cover up some things for which he himself may have been responsible, this accident might have been the result of his own negligence as a minister. I would never have thought of such serious accusation had Mr Nowak taken a leave from his office for the time of the investigation at least. As a matter of fact, something completely opposite is taking place: instead of keeping quiet and waiting for some independent commission to examine his own case, Mr Nowak is omnipresent in Polish TV and other media where he is lecturing others on everything about railways, one can only guess how enormous pressure is exerted on his subordinates in the ministry of transport. By the very fact of staying on in office he became a judge in his own case, all the Poles can guess the verdict of such a jury, possibly manipulated by the minister who was in charge.
Interesting article. I'd still rather get a Polish train than drive.
Also, I believe you mean 'Warsaw-Cracow line'.
At least no one is blaming it on the Russians...
....yet.
Before we blame this tragedy on the Russians let me remind everybody that the Ministry of Transport has recently been swarmed by protests signed by Polish signalmen in which they informed the authorities about it being simply impossible to fulfill all the new requirements imposed upon them (government is experimenting on how it might look like if they forced one worker to perform the entire work previously done by two, three or even more employees). People are imposed such harsh conditions in their work that they no longer are capable of paying adequate attention to the trains' safety, they are just overloaded in their work as signalmen and they had informed the authorities about it long ago. If the government decided to economize on the safety of Polish railways and to ignore warnings of the bad situation there, then the government is responsible for this tragedy, period.
Rails are still safer than roads, but comparing raw daily numbers of deaths is misleading. You need to examine how many passenger-km each mode compiles in order to arrive at a proper distance-adjusted fatality rate. There are doubtless more car fatalities every day than rail fatalities, but there are probably also lots more total passenger-km traveled each day in cars and buses than in trains, when aggregating over the whole country.
I would agree that raw numbers are misleading, since rail's modal share is rarely very big. However, in terms of fatalities per passenger-km, statistics still show that rail is far safer than road travel. This applies to Poland, the EU as a whole, and various other developed countries.
Well yeah, that point was in my very first sentence ("Rails are still safer than roads..."). But the Economist's blogger could have done a better job of showing this to the readers by listing the actual normalized figures for the two modes.