Have you ever gone to a station to board a train and found yourself, rather than waiting on the platform, on the tracks? No? It's probably because you're not blind. If you were blind, you might have found yourself in Abdul Esener’s situation, on the tracks, a minute before a non-stop goods train came hurtling down the line.
Abdul, with the support of law firm Leigh Day, is now taking legal action against Network Rail and Northern and Avanti, the railway companies, regarding their respective failures to provide tactile paving and passenger assistance.
Abdul should have had passenger assistance, which he had booked, to help him too, but because of a missed connection, the staff went home, leaving him stranded without help, on a platform with no tactile paving so he could find the edge of the platform. Often a lack of passenger assistance is just (just – ha!) a massive inconvenience which leaves you stranded miles from home in chronic pain and tears (happens all the time – no really, it does, and it’s inexcusable). But in cases like this, it can lead to death.
