6 days Ago By Evening Standard
Lord Blunkett is calling for action on “death trap” Tube platforms after he was injured falling down the gap at station. The peer, who is blind, called on to do more to keep visually impaired people safe. He was getting on a train with his guide dog three weeks ago when his feet slipped.
“As I took a step to get on to the Tube train I suddenly felt both my feet disappearing down the gap,” Lord Blunkett, 77, wrote in the on Sunday. “In an instant my body had been propelled forward into the carriage and I was face down on the floor. “My legs had somehow been scraped out of the gap and into the carriage.
As I took a step to get on to the tube train I suddenly felt both my feet disappearing down the gap Lord Blunkett “I didn’t fully know what had happened. I felt enormous pain in both my legs; they were bruised and grazed.” Lord Blunkett’s fall came after a recent heart attack that means he must take blood thinners, which make any bruising or bleeding dangerous.
An confirmed “extraordinary bruising” but no broken leg, and he said he was “angry” about what happened. “Whenever you step into a tube station in you hear the tannoy warn people to ‘mind the gap’,” wrote Lord Blunkett, who was MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough from 1987 to 2015. “But too often there are no staff members to actually help you if, like me, you cannot see.
” He is calling for TfL to make efforts to fill the widest gaps on platforms and make sure there is always someone there to help, especially during rush hour. “Some of our platforms are death traps. The gap between the walkway and train is huge and they are unsafe for everyone, but particularly for blind people.
” He will soon meet TfL to ask for answers and an urgent review into the safety of the busiest Tube stations. Nick Dent, London Underground’s director of customer operations, said: “We were extremely sorry that Lord Blunkett was injured on our network. “We have written to, and will be meeting with, him to discuss how we could have managed the incident better and to ensure that lessons are learned.
“The safety of our customers and staff is at the forefront of everything we do, and while injuries like the one experienced by Lord Blunkett are rare, we are undertaking a huge range of work aimed at eradicating such incidents and making travelling even safer for everyone.” Lord Blunkett’s fall comes as victims of other Tube falls and bus crashes . Among them is mother-of-two Sarah de Lagarde, when she was struck by two Tube trains at High Barnet station in September 2022.
According to TfL, the number of “platform train interface (PTI) incidents” across the Underground rose to 1,941 in 2023, up almost 500 on the figure in 2016. Last year’s total included 261 “falls between platform and train”. Of these, two were classed as “serious”, down from a peak of 34 serious injuries in 2019 – though the definition of what constituted a serious injury was tightened in 2020.
On average, 21 people a month are involved in a PTI. These include falls from the platform, falls between the train and the platform, contact between a person and a train and being caught in or struck by train doors, also known as “trap and drag incidents”..
