Croydon tram crash inquest: Driver 'had perfect record'

Members of London Fire Brigade look at the overturned tram at the site near the Sandilands stop

The driver of a tram that crashed in Croydon, killing seven people, had a perfect professional record, an inquest jury has heard.

The tram tipped over and spun off the tracks in November 2016, travelling at 73kph (45mph), despite a 20kph (12mph) speed restriction being in place.

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) found that driver Alfred Dorris may have slipped into a micro-sleep.

More than 50 people were injured in the accident; eight of them seriously.

RAIB inspector Richard Harrington told the inquest, being held at Croydon Town Hall, that Mr Dorris had previously been a milkman and a bus driver before training as a tram driver for Tram Operations Ltd (TOL) in 2008.

At the time of the accident, Mr Dorris's training and assessments were up to date.

• What is a micro-sleep?

"He was not under any special monitoring, there was no record of any disciplinary action recorded against him, and there were no speed concerns or speed violations against the driver," Mr Harrington said.

He added that TOL "considered Mr Dorris to be very competent and had no particular concerns about his performance".

Six men and one woman died in the crash, having been either fully or partially thrown out of the tram after glass windows and doors shattered on impact, the inquest heard.

Croydon tram crash: Who were the victims?

• Dane Chinnery, 19

• Donald Collett, 62

• Robert Huxley, 63

• Philip Logan, 52,

• Dorota Rynkiewicz, 35

• Philip Seary, 57

• Mark Smith, 35

Mr Dorris, who has been excused from attending the inquest on the grounds of poor health, had driven the same stretch of track 693 times in the year leading up to the crash, including a few days earlier.

On those occasions, his speed at the bend near the Sandimans stop, where the tram overturned, had been clocked as varying between 17kmh (11mph) and 23kmh (14mph).

The jury heard that if Mr Dorris had been driving at 84kmh (52mph) at the time of the crash, a safety system within the tram would have cut the power to the accelerator and forcibly slowed it down.

RAIB's chief inspector Simon French told the inquest previously the tram "absolutely" overturned as a result of excessive speed.

Tramway systems in England are not controlled by fixed signals, but rely on a line-of-sight system, leaving it up to the driver when to brake and when to accelerate.

The inquest is expected to last 13 weeks.