Can you please send me a list referencing any deaths or injuries caused by people opening access doors in-between tube carriages on the London Underground from the beginning of 2018 to the latest records available. Can you please state on which line each injury/death occurred on. Can you also send any information you hold on how many times these doors have been opened each day since the beginning of 2018. And how much it has cost to deal with any incidents resulting from the doors being opened

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Our ref: FOI-3385-1819/GH 

 

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 11 March 2019 asking for information about deaths or injuries caused by people opening access doors in-between tube carriages. 

 

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. I can confirm that we do hold some of the information you require. 

 

We do not have a specific recording category for injuries caused to people opening the interconnecting doors between carriages, and therefore to answer your request we carried out a word search of all recorded incidents on the Tube that involved injury. This showed that there have been no recorded deaths or injuries caused by people opening access doors in-between tube carriages on the London Underground since the beginning of 2018. For your information, there were three incidents where a passenger’s injury involved an interconnecting door, which are summarised below: 

 

• Interconnecting door swung open and hit passenger 
• Passenger tried to close window on interconnecting door & slipped causing cut and bruising on hand 
• Interconnecting door window shattered and covered passenger with glass  

 

The last customer fatality from walking through interconnecting doors on the Underground was in June 2011 on the Metropolitan line. Our Formal Investigation concluded the customer had opened the inter-car doors in order to smoke a cigarette.  

 

Since then, we have introduced a new fleet of walk-through trains on the Metropolitan line trains, which eliminates the possibility of this type of accident happening again. These walk-through trains are also operating on the Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines.  

 

We are unable to advise how many times interconnecting doors have been opened as this information is not recorded. On newer trains, such as those on the Victoria, Central, Jubilee and Northern Lines the driver is alerted when an interconnecting door is opened, but these incidents are not logged. 

 

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal. 

 

Yours sincerely 

 

Graham Hurt 

FOI Case Officer 

FOI Case Management Team 

General Counsel 

Transport for London

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