Risky biscuits

“Waiting a moment won’t hurt you,” was the strapline on the poster on the wall of the Northern Line. Wise words, I thought. Not true in all circumstances—see accidentally unplugged life support machine, infant in burning cot, rapidly approaching pantechnicon and other circumstances for details. But more often right than wrong. And what is this life, so full of care, if we have no chance to stand and stare?

Stare I continued to do. This poster had an iron fist in its velvet glove. In smaller letters below, it announced, nearly grammatically: “Last year: 164 injuries getting on and off trains.” Heavens to Betsy! Thank goodness someone had the sense to put up a poster. It sounds non-footling, as numbers of injuries go. Imagine all those bashed noses and bonked elbows, those commuters staggering onto the platform after trying to squeeze onto an overfilled train and getting double cauliflower ears as the doors slammed shut on their heads. I had a right old giggle, I can tell you.

Then I thought: hang on, there are probably 164 people on this platform right now. I wonder what sort of a safety emergency 164 injuries a year actually represents. Assuming that these 164 injuries were all suffered by different people rather than one extremely unlucky one, how many injuries per journey taken does that work out at?

According to Transport for London (TfL) figures, the number of journeys taken on the Tube in the year to April is expected to reach 1.1 billion—a bit over one seventh of the world’s population. So 164 accidents means that—if my sums are right —0.0000164 per cent of those journeys end in an embarkation/debouchment-related owie. That is one and a half hundred-thousandths of a per cent.

Now, clearly some sort of cost/benefit calculus entered into the thinking of those good people at TfL. Ho, they will have thought. Or, more likely: Ho! Each of these injuries causes a waste of our staff’s time, what with administering sticking plasters, mopping up blood, calling ambulances and so on. That 0.0000164 per cent needs reducing, and fast. A poster campaign will more than save the money it costs us, if it prevents even half of these embarkation/debouchment-related owies—henceforth E/DROs. (According to TfL, the campaign is costing £40,000 —rushing to board and falling down the gap being one of four safety hazards tackled, along with getting shut in the door, stumbling on escalators, and falling onto the tracks.)

They will have taken other factors into account before commissioning the designers and readying the printing presses and the men with overalls, long brushes and glue. It seems fair, after all, to assume that a proportion of these 164 injuries involved people who were, at the time, either roaring drunk or so irredeemably spifflicated on disco biscuits that they would have been hard pressed to read a poster, still less take on board its advice. TfL weren’t able to furnish me with statistics as to what that proportion was—and, of course, it’s subjective. There are no agreed metrics to calibrate the distinctions between “tipsy,” “ratted” and “immortal” any more than there are between “buzzy,” “mashed” and “spangled.”

So the following is, I admit, guesswork. I would say the proportion of our 164 E/DROs falling into the too-zonked-for-a-poster-to-help category will be less than but closely adjacent to 100 per cent. But let’s call it 50. TfL will have a better handle on these things than me, and they’re not idiots: why splash out on a poster campaign if none of the people it’s intended to help will be sober enough to read it?

That means that this poster stands a chance of helping—assuming they happen to be standing next to it in the moment or so before they hurl themselves face-first into the still-not-open door of a southbound Northern Line train—a bit over half of one hundred-thousandths of a per cent of the Tube-travelling population.

And at this stage, attempting to follow the logic of the folk at TfL, I faltered. It’s hard to know what difference a poster campaign of this sort makes—if the statistics on E/DROs are down next year, or if the proportion of sober people involved has fallen, success of a sort may be claimed if not proved. But it does start to look, given all the unknowable variables involved, more like an act of faith—a gesture at the idea of safety rather than a practical measure intended to achieve it: the accident prevention equivalent of a nice cup of tea in a “Keep Calm And Carry On” mug, accompanied by a digestive biscuit.

Speaking of biscuits… According to the Home and Leisure Accident Surveillance System Database (a wonderful resource—you’ll never look at a toaster in the same way), in the last three years for which data is available there were an average of 640 accidents involving biscuits annually. The British biscuit market was worth £2.2bn in 2011. If we call it a quid a packet, then you’re about twice as likely to be injured by a packet of biscuits as you are to be hurt getting on or off a Tube train too quickly. Shouldn’t someone start a poster campaign?