London - Widespread rail industry failures were as much to blame for the Southall train crash as the driver who went through danger signals, the official report into the September 1997 tragedy has said.
A Great Western Trains (GWT) driver's "unexplained inattention" was the primary cause of the disaster in which seven people died. But ranking "equally in their potency" with Mr Larry Harrison's failure were others by GWT and Railtrack, said the report.
An advanced warning system on the train had been switched off due to a fault and the sophisticated Automatic Train Protection system was also not in operation because Mr Harrison was not properly trained to use it.