Today's news

Road kill

One of today’s news items in the Guardian was that a French court has found the national rail operator SNCF guilty of negligence after a departing train ran over a cat in the station of Paris Montparnasse.

Apparently the cat had escaped from the travel bag of owners Georgia and her 15-year-old daughter Melaina. They said that their pet escaped from its travel bag and disappeared under a high-speed train. The owners tried for 20 minutes to get staff to rescue it. When the train departed, the cat was killed. “We saw him sliced in half” Melaina reported.

Reactions were fierce. The French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, declaring himself to be “particularly shocked”. The animal rights body the Brigitte Bardot Foundation filed a complaint. A Paris court fined SNCF 1,000 € for “negligence”, while the SNCF was ordered to pay another 1000 € 9n damages to each of the pet’s owners.

What was the SNCF supposed to do? There were 800 passengers on the train waiting to leave for Bordeaux. Imagine you are one of them. You have settled down in your seat, open your phone to check facebook and write a loving note to a girl friend you are about to meet in Bordeaux and the announcement comes: the departure of this train is delayed because of an unauthorized cat on the track. You will be late for your date. Maybe you even have a connecting train to catch. Soon all traffic in and out of Paris Montparnasse station will have to stop to avoid the running over of cat hunters who have to cross tracks to go after the terrified animal. Maybe the pet even finds a way to climb into one of the overhead girders, so the electricity has to be shut off and the fire brigade with their long ladder has to be called in. More trains are delayed or canceled. Outside the station whole TGV units have to be evacuated since the air conditioning does not work any more since the electricity is turned off. The resulting mess is inconceivable. Nobody wants to be part of that. The costs for the train companies to refund tickets afterwards will be much higher than the fine imposed by the brave judge.

However, this verdict will have other unforeseen future consequences. Rail operators will try to avoid bad reputation and fines and prioritize animal safety over the running of their business. Pet owners short of money will release their honey in a station and call 112 in the hope they can pocket a fine when they are not caught. On the other hand, animals can be used intentionally to delay or block traffic, for example by releasing them on airport runways and motorways. Imagine extinction rebellion appears at their blockades with their favorite pets. It will take days to get a bunch of rabbits out of the danger zone when released on a runway of a major airport. Police can carry off activists from the motorway quite easily, but it will take them days to find their guinea pigs. I already look forward to the news on television broadcasting pictures of riot police with nets running after the little cuties on the tarmac.

If the verdict of the judge in Paris is generalized it will also be valid for all kinds of road kill. Every day far more pets are killed by motorists than by trains. Like in the case of the SNCF’s train it supposedly is not intentional. However, it should be avoided. The only possible solution is to require pet owners to always keep their animals on leash when outside. Otherwise traffic has to be stopped when a loose animal appears close to the road. High fines and compensations will have to be paid by motorists who kill or injure somebodies animal. With a similar possibility of abuse as outlined above.

Isn’t it, on the other hand, gross negligence of the owners to allow the cat to escape from the travel bag? People trespassing on a railway line as well as trying to obstruct or delay traffic get a fine. This does not only apply for railways but is also for the activists of last generation or extinction rebellion blocking a motorway. Intentionally or not, Georgia and her daughter did release their cat from the travel bag and therefore are to be blamed for the death of the cat and for disrupting traffic in the station of Paris Montparnasse. They ought to be fined, not the rail operator.

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/04/french-rail-operator-sncf-fined-after-train-killed-cat-hiding-on-tracks