A woman was nearly killed when her scarf got caught in the doors of a departing tube train and she was dragged along an underground platform, a report has revealed.
The woman, who had been trying to board the train, was pulled along the platform for about 10 metres before a member of staff grabbed her. She fell to the ground and the scarf was torn from her neck and carried into the tunnel by the train.
The incident at about 7pm on 3 February happened after the driver did not notice the knitted scarf was trapped in the doors and started moving the Piccadilly line train away from the platform at Holborn station in central London.
A tube worker on the platform did not alert the driver to the situation, the report from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said, but tried to help the woman as she was pulled along.
The report said: “The passenger suffered injuries to her neck and back, but the actions of the member of staff may have saved her from being more badly hurt.”
The RAIB said the driver had been unable to see what was happening on the platform after the train started to move.
The report said the role of the station assistant who came to the passenger’s aid involved the safe dispatch of trains but that the equipment and procedures associated with the role did not enable him to intervene effectively in an emergency.
The RAIB said the last fatal accident of this type on the Underground – on 21 October 1997 – had occurred at the same location in similar circumstances and involved the same type of train.
In the 1997 incident a nine-year-old boy caught his anorak in a closing tube train door and was dragged along the platform and under the train.
However, the report into this year’s incident said: “There do not appear to be any factors associated with the location that could create any link between the 1997 and 2014 accidents.”
On the 2014 incident, the RAIB made a recommendation to London Underground “covering possible improvements to the means available to staff to stop trains from departing if an emergency occurs during the train dispatch process”.