It would appear that driver-only trains are largely small ones with 3-4 carriages and that Southern Rail wants to extend this to 12-car commuter trains, into which 1,500 people are packed. This is the sort of grass-roots detail which builds a convincing case one way or the other. It’s certainly more useful than the crapola we get from union leaders and politicians.
But then, in real life, we’ve got some guy with a sinecure job, who sits in his guard’s compartment between stops, messing with his phone. In a 1% case; or is it really a 0.0001% case?; the chances are that by the time the guard realizes anything is wrong, there will be 1,500 customers on their phones, complaining about the hold-up or taking selfies with the remains of the idiot who stuck his head out of a window and got it knocked off.
When the guard leaves his safe zone, he’ll be confronted with the task of working his way through a jam-packed train full of hostile customers wanting to know what the hold-up is, blaming him for the delay and demanding to know what he’s doing about it.
In the circumstances, it sounds like he’ll be a big help.
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