(12 Apr 2015, 5:17 pm)northern156 wrote With the amount of suicides on the railway generally increasing, it would be detrimental to give drivers indefinite leave and counselling. Not only because it'd be very expensive but also they've lost a driver - typically, new drivers can't come to replace other drives fast enough. To get someone trained 'off the street' takes around a year and it costs around £70,000 per person.

Some people take it easy, some don't - at the FOC where I work, there was a driver there who had four and he was at around retirement age. Yet there's plenty of others who have had none, you can't predict them.

Christ, it still affects me when I pass an overbridge where I was driven past near Penrith around an hour after a fatality, you could see the police vans and other vehicles parked there. I just get a nervous twitch when I pass there.

You wouldn't expect indefinite leave, but most should be entitled to an income protection scheme of some sort? It'd typically kick in after 6 months long term sick, and would pay the employee's wages (or at least a percentage of them) from then on.