On Tue, 6 Nov 2007, BH Williams wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
.li...

Clive D. W. Feather scribbled with quill and ink on parchment: I've
just received an email telling me:

The RAIB is carrying out an investigation into an incident when a
road rail engineering machine ran away from Brentford to Romford on
4 November 2007.

Would someone be interested in reminding me why the RAIB and HSE or
whoever do parallel investigations?

IIRC, the RAIB investigations are into the cause of the incident, and ways
of avoiding a future recurrence, and not in bringing a prosecution of a
'guilty party'- indeed, I believe that evidence given to them cannot be used
in a prosecution. This followed HSE handling of certain cases, where certain
parties were advised by their lawyers not to volunteer evidence in case they
incriminated themselves.

Fair enough. But does this require two entirely separate investigations?
How about doing the HSE/police bit, and then handing the results to the
RAIB to be extended with non-evidence evidence? Or allowing people to make
supplementary non-evidence statements when talking to the HSE? Are the
goals or methods of the two investigations sufficiently different that
this wouldn't work - aren't they both basically trying to find out what
happened? I suppose there would be practical problems in carrying out an
investigation where some of your evidence could be used in court and some
couldn't. And if the two bodies share information effectively, i suppose
there's little downside to them both working at once.

tom

--
If it ain't broke, open it up and see what makes it so bloody special.