Tyne & Wear Metro Safety Campaign

23 October 2013, 07:59 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

The owner of the Tyne & Wear Metro's launching a new safety campaign focussing on the dangers of holding open train doors.

The Nexus campaign's come about after a woman got her arm caught in the door of a train at Jarrow metro station last year.

She was dragged a short distance along the platform, as passengers on board raised the alarm and alerted the driver, who stopped the train.

Last year there were three incidents of people being trapped in train doors, but a survey carried out by two of DB Regio Tyne and Wear's train drivers as part of the RAIB investigation show there are at least 20,000 incidents of passengers deliberately obstructing the doors on trains each year.

People hold the doors of trains open for others, or there have been incidents of passengers using walking sticks, wheelchairs, prams, umbrellas and even pets to try to prevent doors from closing so they can board a train at the last minute.

They've now released a video of the dangers of holding the doors open after a Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) report.

As well as being dangerous, obstructing the doors of Metro trains is costly and causes major disruption to services.

If the doors of a train are damaged, the train must be taken out of service to be checked and repaired, causing inconvenience to hundreds of passengers at a time.

Train driver Chris Wray, said:
"People obstruct the doors every day - I've had at least two or three incidents during my five-hour shift just now.

I once saw a train with a walking stick stuck in the doors.

People know they shouldn't do it, because we tell them, but they still do. It's very frustrating as a driver to see it happening again and again.

It's dangerous, makes us late and can cause problems with the doors, which means we have to take trains out of service - and that's an inconvenience to passengers."

There have been 80 incidents of trains being delayed because of people holding doors open, since April.

Passengers who are caught obstructing the doors face a fine of up to £1,000 and there have been two people prosecuted in the last 18 months.