17/05/2024
🚇 Imagine it: you’re on the Tube and you’ve pulled into a station, when smoke and a burning smell start to fill your carriage. You’ve raised the alarm to the driver through the intercom, but it’s now been four and a half minutes of radio silence, and the doors are still firmly shut. There’s no emergency button or lever to open them from the inside. Through the windows you see people on the platform urging you to get out. What would you do?
This was the grim choice facing 500 passengers on a Northern Line train at Clapham Common on May 5, 2023. Photos and videos of their attempts to escape — windows smashed, doors pried open — garnered widespread attention, both on social media and in national papers. But at times, the public reaction wasn’t exactly sympathetic. “Classic example of mass panic. Not the first example of crowds of people acting inexplicably and won’t be the last,” was one such comment. Even police would suggest passengers had been “confused”, mistaking dust from the train's brakes for something actually burning.
Except, that’s not the full story. We've obtained documents that overwhelmingly suggest passengers were right to panic that day. And they also reveal a worrying trend: these kinds of incidents are happening more frequently.
Read our full investigation using the link below 🔗
What TfL and the police got wrong — and why passengers were right to freak out
