THE full scale of the scandal surrounding Britain's crumbling railway bridge barriers may be even worse than damning official figures show, it has been claimed.

Last week, The Northern Echo revealed that there were hundreds of near-disasters on the railways in the decade leading up to the Selby rail disaster in North Yorkshire, which led to the deaths of ten people.

A comprehensive study by industry watchdog Railway Safety highlighted more than 700 incidents in the past ten years when vehicles had veered off roads and crashed on to railway property.

Forty-one vehicles were left stranded on the tracks in the past year alone. Five were struck by trains and two people killed.

But structural engineer Professor John Knapton, an expert in bridge safety barriers at Newcastle University, believes the casualty toll could be far higher.

"Those figures are probably an underestimate," he said. "What is not recorded is the fact that an awful lot of people have crashed on a bridge and often, because there is no barrier, they are able to extricate the car themselves and get away before police arrive."

The Northern Echo has campaigned for urgent improvements to the state of scores of bridge barriers in the North-East and North Yorkshire, since our investigations found the majority to be potential death traps.

Safety experts have supported the campaign, highlighting the fact that last February's tragedy at Selby was by no means a one-in-a-million event.

Prof Knapton said: "There are a lot of incidents like this, especially on older bridges so, if anything, the figures are an underestimate. They are not telling the whole story about how many near-misses there are.

"We know that there is roughly one incident a week where a vehicle leaves the road and gets on to railway property."

At the end of May, a lorry was left teetering on the brink of plunging on to the Harrogate to Leeds line after smashing into a barrier.