Road Safety Week special: How the ‘perfect storm’ led to this survivor’s RTC

This is the first episode in our 2024 Rail Industry Road Safety Week miniseries. 

In this episode, we're joined by Dave Whelan, a train manager at GB Railfreight and someone who experienced a work-related road traffic accident. Dave speaks with our host, RSSB's Principal Health and Wellbeing Specialist Joana Faustino, about what led to the accident, his life in the aftermath, and what GBRf has done since.

Find out more here: https://www.rssb.co.uk/managing-occupational-road-risk

Transcript

Host (Joana Faustino) [00.17]: Welcome to the first episode in our Rail Industry Road Safety Week miniseries. This week, we'll be speaking with three very special guests, each of whom will be speaking about their own experiences of road risk and seeking to spread the word on the importance of world safety.

I'm Joana Faustino, Principal Health and Wellbeing Specialist at RSSB, and with us today is Dave Whelan, a train manager at GB Railfreight and someone who experienced a work-related road traffic accident. He'll be speaking with us about what led to the accident, his experience of recovery, and what changed for him in the aftermath.

Hi Dave, thank you for joining us today.

Dave Whelan [00.52]: Hi, Joana. Thank you for having me.

Host [00.54]: So, first things, first, can you tell us a bit more about yourself and the work you do with GB Railfreight?

Dave [01.00]: Yes, certainly. I'm a 46-year-old man, family guy. Big family. It's mainly just my family and my work that I love. At GB Railfreight, as you said, I'm a train manager. So, that involves taking trains all over the country, freight trains. Carrying stone and other things. And working on possessions and all bits and bobs to deal with rail to be honest with you.

Host [01.21]: Thanks, Dave. It sounds like road driving isn't the main part of your role, it's just part of your regular every day. And it was while driving a car that you experienced your accident, wasn't it?

Dave [01.32]: Yes, that's correct. We do have the odd shift where we take a train from one location to another but we don't bring another train back. So, we end up either using taxis or hire cars or passenger trains, depending on the time of day and where the location is.

Host [01.46]: OK. And is it OK if we move on to discussing that a little now, your accident?

Dave [01.51]: Yes, certainly, yeah.

Host [01.52]: So can you tell us what happened on the day of the accident?

Dave [01.56]: Yes, I was taking a train from the East Midlands down to London to hand it over to another one of my colleagues, and he was providing me with a hire car to come back up to the East Midlands because the time of day was 2am in the morning. There's no passenger services, and obviously taxis can be quite expensive. So, I was bringing the hire car up. It was a Mercedes, a car that I don't usually drive. I was bringing it from Hendon all the way back up to Nottingham.

I was on the M1, travelling through a 50 mph speed restriction while they were doing roadworks. And then it came up on the information board above the motorway that there was a motorway closure between Junction 13 and 14 of the M1. Now, that's not somewhere where I'm used to coming off. So, I decided to pull into the services at Toddington to set up my SatNav so that I knew where I was going when I came off the motorway.

And then, as I was entering the services at Toddington, the car in front of me slammed on his brakes, I swerved to avoid him, and unfortunately decided to collide with a tree.

Host [03.08]: Wow. Wow, that sounds like a scary experience. Thank you for sharing it. Can you tell us a bit about the aftermath? So, it sounds like quite a big accident. What was your recovery like, Dave?
 
Dave [03.22]: The recovery took five and a half months before I was back doing my role. There was quite a few little incidents. I had hospital appointments, I was suffering with dizziness and unsteadiness on my feet, and stuff like that. And obviously, climbing in and out of trains... there was no way I'd be able to do that while I was dizzy.

The other thing I was able to do after the accident was push my doctor to get an assessment for sleep apnoea because it's something that I thought I've had for quite some time, but I've never met the criteria to basically get assessed for it. And actually having the crash gave me the opportunity to go, "Listen, I think..."

So, they sent me away for a sleep study, and it turns out I have severe sleep apnoea.

Host [04.09]: Yeah, so it sounds like that might have been a positive outcome, to actually have the assessment and to be able to understand for sure that you were suffering with sleep apnoea.

And I think for people listening to us, we thought it might be interesting to just go over some symptoms, and Dave, of course, you can jump in.

But with sleep apnoea, a common symptom to look out for is feeling very tired during the day. So, you may have difficulties concentrating. Your mood may change abruptly. But then there are also many symptoms that become noticeable when you are sleeping. So, it might be harder for you to notice yourself. And this may include breathing stopping, making gasping or choking noises, snoring. And associated with this may also come finding it difficult to have a good night's sleep, of course, if all of this is happening.

If you have a partner, then your partner might be able to tell you how it is that you sleep. If you don't, then see if you can ask someone to stay with you. They might be able to identify certain symptoms. And of course, you can find a lot more information on sleep apnoea on the NHS website as well.

So, Dave, would you mind telling us a bit more about your experience with sleep apnoea and how you are managing at the moment, and what difference this diagnosis has brought to you?
 
Dave [05.20]: Yes, certainly, certainly. I've had sleep apnoea since I was a child. But it's been very difficult for me to get a diagnosis for sleep apnoea because I don't meet any of the criteria. I'm not the right age. I'm not overweight. I don't have a big neck. It's all these things that, when you contact a doctor, they'll go, "No. It's your shift patterns. It's because you've got kids, and they keep you awake." They don't want to diagnose you with something that potentially could be caused by something else.

So, it's been a long struggle for me to get diagnosed. It's been over 30 years that I've been trying. You know, I've had my partner go in with me and go, "He stops breathing in his sleep. He's awful. He's terrible. He's grumpy when he wakes up." Because I was. I was always, always tired. It didn't matter how long of a sleep I had, I was always tired. I could fall asleep any time of the day. It didn't matter. Literally, as I sat down, I was asleep. It was just one of those things, I was permanently exhausted.

So, when work kindly paid for me to have a private sleep study, I had this machine strapped up to me for the night, and they recorded it. And it came back as severe. There was a scoring system that they use. They use a thing called AHI, which is Apnoea Hypopnea Index. So, apnoea is the number of times you stop breathing. Hypopnea is the number of times you have light or shallow breathing in an hour. Severe is anything over 30. I was 53.4. So, nearly like every minute I was either stopping breathing or really, really shallow in my breathing, so now I can understand why I was always so tired every time I woke up.

Then I got a what's known as a CPAP machine, which forces air into my mouth and through my nose, which opens up the soft tissue in the airways, which allows me to get a better night's sleep. So, I've gone from 53.4 an hour, and now I'm averaging 4 or 5 an hour. So, it's a huge difference. And everybody is noticing what a difference this is having on me. I wake up feeling refreshed. I wake up, I'm happy. I'm not grumpy anymore. I don't fall asleep in the middle of the day. I'm not struggling to stay focused. It's such a life-changing thing just to have this machine. It's incredible. Honestly, if anybody wakes up feeling tired, any of the listeners wake up feeling tired and they're like, "Why am I always tired?" Get assessed. Honestly, it's the best thing that's ever happened to me, getting this machine.

Host [07.58]: That is a really good message because, of course, doctors might look at a variety of risk factors, as you explained before, but sometimes even if you don't meet any of those risk factors, you might still be struggling with something. So, I think there's a really good message here, especially for people who work in safety-critical roles or perform safety-critical duties to insist, to actually try and try again to have an assessment to ensure that this is not what is happening or to get the confirmation that sleep apnoea is actually what is causing a lot of those symptoms. Thank you, Dave.

Dave [08.30]: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, GB Railfreight have been really good because their occupational health are asking, whenever we have a medical, they do kind of like a checkbox thing, you know, it's like zero, not at all, quite often, and stuff like that. And then depending on whether you score highly on that or not, then they will actually literally put you through for a sleep study. Quite a few people have been put through and have found that they don't have it. But some people have. And there's other colleagues of mine that have started the process that I'm on because they've been identified as having moderate to severe sleep apnoea. So, yeah, it's great. The company's been wonderful. The support that we've had from the company has just been absolutely, absolutely amazing.

Host [09.10]: That's amazing to hear. Dave, I would like to rewind a bit now. Can you tell us a bit about what may have contributed to this accident taking place?

Dave [09.20]: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where people talk about 'the Swiss cheese' and all the holes lining up. It's services that I have never stopped that before, because I usually stop at Watford Gap, the motorway being closed, a car that I was not used to driving, which I believe - because I had my work boots on - I probably caught both pedals, the accelerator and brake, at the same time. The time of day, you know, it's two o 'clock in the morning. It's a time where people are tired. And a multitude of little things that all just piled up just to create that perfect storm kind of thing. And the next thing is a tree in front of me.

Host [09.59]: Yeah. It's interesting because, yeah, it's exactly like that: a perfect storm. And what I was wondering was if, as a result of that, GB Railfreight had implemented any additional safety measures regarding driving for work, for example?

Dave [10.11]: Yes, we've had a safety brief that was sent out because of my accident. And it said that when you're driving a hire car, that we need to now take a separate pair of shoes, some other footwear, because obviously our boots are quite large and quite chunky and very little in the way of feel through them. So, that's one thing that they've implemented.

The other thing is to familiarise yourself with the car before you start driving anywhere. Set up the SatNav and do whatever you need to do prior to even moving the car so that you are more comfortable. I'll be honest with you, if I'd have set up the SatNav I'd have known that the motorway was closed and I could've prepared for it better and stuff like that rather than having to come off at services that I didn't know.

There's a few bits that have come in about it and stuff like that. And make sure you're well rested and make sure you've had plenty to drink, coffee if needs be, whatever else you need to deal with any kind of like tiredness or fatigue that you might be suffering.

Host [11.08]: Yeah. Thank you, Dave. And I think on that note, considering that you have gone through all of this, is there any advice that you'd like to share that you think might be helpful for people who drive to work or drive for work? Anything that you'd like to tell them?

Dave [11.21]: If you're driving a car, just be prepared. Just plan ahead. I made the mistake of just assuming that I could just drive the car like any other car that I've driven, and it was just slightly different. And just that little bit of difference makes a huge difference in the long run.

I think if I'd have just set up a little bit, taken a little bit more time just to set up and just plan before I started moving, then things like this could have been avoided. Certainly. Yeah.

Host [11.52]: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dave. And thank you for listening!

If you want to learn more about the work RSSB does to help the industry manage occupational road risk, please visit our website. 

We look forward to you joining us for the next episode, and in the meantime, safe travels!