20% of Drivers 'unsafe'......

Yes Chris, its true to say that LU demands high standards from its drivers, but one could argue that they're not getting it.
How? Well, the kind of re-training in question is only offered AFTER an incident. Whereas poor standards picked up on during say a drivers annual monitoring are not dealt with in the same way, usually just words of advice from the CA trained DMT.

As this article only refers to (post-incident) re-training, and not situations where a sub-standard performance has been identified, this, unfortunately, negates the positive slant you try to place on the article. Shame though, as it does sound like they're knocking us.

But keeping things in context, it must be remembered how many signals an LU driver passes in an average length shift, compared to, say, a mainline rail driver. The scope for a SPAD is, IMO, increased for an LU driver.

That headline is such a load of rubbish - a SPAD, handled properly, is in no way unsafe.

Unfortunately, LU's response to this is to harp on about how such errors will be eliminated with the (eventual) introduction of ATO on all lines. They should really be informing the public of the excellent failsafe that exists (i.e. the trainstop). I'm not saying that SPAD's are acceptable, but they are far more serious on national rail, most of which doesn't have trainstop protection, or even ATP, nearly 20 years on from Clapham Junction . . .

Clapham wasn't caused by a SPAD. The SPAD happened because of the wrong side failure of the signal and the crash only occured once the driver stopped to report the SPAD and unwittingly left his train where it was not being protected by the signalling.

It's probab;y very debateable - I can think of one or two signals where a SPAD has a very high (possibly unnacceptably high if the risk assements were ever done) chance of derailment.

Ah yes - sorry, my memory must be failing me...!

The trouble is other train operating companies don't want ex-LU T/Ops and any perusal of the adverts in Loco Journal show that all the TOCs are after is existing main line drivers which are poached from one company to another. The adverts nearly always refer to wanting "qualified" staff, and preferably on the traction operated by the company itself. The only other route in seems to be by joining at the lowest possible grade of station or on-board staff and taking a chance later with the internal recruitment campaigns.

LU caused it's own troubles by doing away with the guard's job which was in effect a two-apprenticeship for T/Op during which you got to know rolling stock, signalled moves and general rules & regs. Even if it made no economic sense to have two members of staff on a train (except maybe to enforce Boris' booze-ban), maybe the Northern Line should have retained guards and thus served as LU's entry point to the train grades?

Also internal recruitment on LU comes almost exclusively from new CSA's (long service ones would have applied years ago) and is thus being sourced from people employed under TFL's present day "customer-focused" politically correct-led agenda which has next to nothing to do with being a T/Op. Why should a potential T/Op have to demonstrate the TFL key competence of "equality", to show he (or she) won't just shut one group of passenger out when closing the doors?

Years ago LT liked to recruit from people who'd been in the forces, emergency services, post office, other public transport operators etc, as this meant familiarity with a uniformed (not un-informed!), disciplined, hierarchy-led organisation. Nowadays it seems the opposite is the case and doesn't it show?

Well there you go - rant over!

PS - And we didn't report hitting autos as there was no black box TMS on board to spy on us, so no wonder the number of reported SPADs has gone up now!