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Tube Driver Crushes Himself (and Everyone Else) | Last Moments

Qxir | September 22, 2025



What does high-impact claustrophobia look like?

“The Moorgate tube crash occurred on 28 February 1975 at 8:46 am on the London Underground’s Northern City Line; 43 people died and 74 were injured after a train failed to stop at the line’s southern terminus, Moorgate station, and crashed into its end wall. It is considered the worst peacetime accident on the London Underground. No fault was found with the train, and the inquiry by the Department of the Environment concluded that the accident was caused by the actions of Leslie Newson, the 56-year-old driver.
The crash forced the first carriage into the roof of the tunnel at the front and back, but the middle remained on the trackbed; the 16-metre-long (52 ft) coach was crushed to 6.1 metres (20 ft). The second carriage was concertinaed at the front as it collided with the first, and the third rode over the rear of the second. The brakes were not applied and the dead man’s handle was still depressed when the train crashed. The London Fire Brigade, Ambulance Service and City of London Police attended the scene. It took 13 hours to remove the injured from the wreckage, many of whom had to be cut free. With no services running into the adjoining platform to create the piston effect pushing air into the station, ventilation was poor and temperatures in the tunnel rose to over 49 °C (120 °F). It took a further four days to extract the last body, that of Newson; his cab, normally 91 centimetres (3 ft) deep, had been crushed to 15 centimetres (6 in).
The post-mortem on Newson showed no medical reason to explain the crash. A cause has never been established, and theories include suicide, that he may have been distracted, or that he was affected by conditions such as transient global amnesia or akinesis with mutism. The subsequent inquest established that Newson had also inexplicably overshot platforms on the same route on two other occasions earlier in the week of the accident. Tests showed that Newson had a blood alcohol level of 80 mg/100 ml—the level at which one can be prosecuted for drink-driving, though the alcohol may have been produced by the natural decomposition process over four days at a high temperature.
In the aftermath of the crash, London Underground introduced a safety system that automatically stops a train when travelling too fast. This became known informally as Moorgate protection. Northern City Line services into Moorgate ended in October 1975 and British Rail services started in August 1976. After a long campaign by relatives of the dead, two memorials were unveiled in the vicinity of the station, one in July 2013 and one in February 2014.”

More on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorgate_tube_crash

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Written by Qxir

Comments

This post currently has 45 comments.

  3. @tylerkinley268

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    What a terrifying thought; working in a HOT dark tunnel under emergency conditions, only to have hands suddenly begin grabbing and clutching him.

    I would have to excuse myself for a second.

  10. @mhoppy6639

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    This was described very effectively in another vid as the Swiss cheese model. Two slices full of holes, by chance one of the holes line up exactly.
    However, Van Zants actions, in having his outcome focused mental model disturbed by the delays, ego takes over and:
    “We go”

    Such a tragedy and KLM tried to cover up their star pilot’s role in this disaster before the truth came out.
    The klm co-pilot DID question whether they had clearance but Van Zant said the above.
    Captain grubs said “the son of a bitch has [takenoff]..!”
    The whole first class section of the pan am 747 was torn off.

  12. @Serenity_Dee

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    Absence seizure, microsleep, minor stroke or other cerebral ischemia, vasovagal syncope. I'm pretty sure any sort of evidence of such an event would not have survived the impact.

  13. @MrAwesomeone

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    So I'm just a guy certainly no doctor but could he have had some kind of seizure? I heard most people who have one will never have another indicating it doesn't necessarily have to be a chronic condition that would be known about already. Also just anecdotally I've seen seizures where a person just locks up, his hand could have still been actuating the dead man switch while he was, for all intents and purposes, unconscious. Again i could be wrong please tell me if i am but it seems more likely than daydreaming and would explain why there were no obvious signs of suicidal ideation or behavior changes
    Ah ok you've said that was possible now

  16. @bioodfox7805

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    I do not think he intended to do it, after hearing the factors. Possibly tiredness. I am a versed driver, but I am the worst on the road, when behind the wheel tired. You make mistakes you otherwise wouldn't. Just as bad as being intoxicated. Please never drive tired. Whatever the destination, it isn't worth risking never arriving to.

  17. @55tranquility

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    I am really interested in this incident, i'm not a Dr but i'm a mental health nurse everything I have read makes me think he experienced an absence seizure, the descriptions people on the platform gave of him staring straight ahead fit with that. It also could have been temporal lobe epilepsy, a stroke, even a micro sleep – there is even a possibility he was daydreaming perhaps due to lack of sleep? Nothing i have read, to me would indicate he did this due to mental illness to take his own life as some have commented – some type of seizure is much more likely.

  32. @seancarter6492

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    Maybe he was suffering from mini strokes. He'd basically look normal for the first part but act on autopilot. But their actions aren't perfect. Like putting groceries that would go into a pantry, into the towel closet, for example.

  35. @BINGOTECH-lt8lt

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    Someone has said (on an underground drivers facebook group) that Les Newson was known for (what you might call) brain lapeses

    i was told he did things like once when he was a guard, he opened his own door, but forgot to open the passenger doors………and once in the staff canteen, he got a mouthful of food on his fork and then froze with the fork only halfway in his mouth.

    Make of that what you will

  36. @harveyanimations8974

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    It might have been caused by a simple mistake? Perhaps the driver, in a memory lapse, thought that there was a station after the one he crashed in instead of a dead end, and that was the one he was supposed to stop at. Perhaps he had just forgotten to turn the engine off, as you mentioned he had overshot some stations before. Could really have been an accident

  38. @brandicox1857

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    I have seizures and I wonder if he had the type I have. I didn't even know how many types there were and I didn't know that I have been having seizures more and more for a decade (in Feb will be 10 yrs) after a bad concussion. I thought there were only the collapse and convulse ones. I knew and worked with people with that type before and had helped them through their seizures. Stress and heat can cause my type. I was at work, speaking mid sentence with a customer, and completely blacked out sight wise. All sound stopped, but I stayed standing. The customer was patting my arm and asking if I was ok when I came to. He said i just stopped talking and stared straight at him. I turned grey and just checked out. It was during a severely stressful day, and that was the only time I completely lost sight and hearing. I didn't even know what it was and had been going to Dr to try to figure it out. Now they're so bad that I have them for hours at a time. If he was buying his daughter a car, and if he had other stress things going on, he might have just seized. He could have been completely unaware that he was having them. It took someone who has my type of seizures, and saw one of mine, to tell me they thought that was what I was having. She told me to go get checked out ASAP. I was having 3-4 every day for about 2 years, and just thought I was just having severe fatigue and sleepiness. Or either it was meds. It's a very long story, but that could have happened to this guy. The MRI and CT of my brain only shows that some of the vessels are smaller on one side than they are on the other. So the autopsy could have shown nothing wrong. I would like to think of her had plans to do things after work, especially for his daughter, that it wouldn't be suicide. We'll never know. All of those poor people's stories are heartbreaking. 😢 I know the searchers had to be screwed up after that as well. Especially the guy who was being grabbed by a bunch of hands. Just horrific all around. I enjoy your videos. I just found your page a couple hours ago. I like how informative you are and that you include pictures and supporting evidence of the videos I have seen so far. You have another subscriber now. Thank you for your videos.

  40. @nicholaswastakenwastaken

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    These actions taken were necessary. However, there is still a problem, which are walkthrough trains (only on deeplevel tube lines). If passengers see such an accident about to occur as if the safety precautions have been disabled, they can warn others to move to the back of the train.

  41. @technoman9000

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    A friend of mine used to work as an insurance adjuster. The funniest thing a client told her was that she drove off the road and wrecked her car because she "was thinking about Jesus." Maybe something similar was happening here… religious seizure

  45. @windwoman3549

    September 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

    Well – it COULD have been suicide, I suppose. There have been quite a few airliners brought down by pilots, other airline employees, and terrorists (of course.)

    Considering the train’s driver’s behavior leading up to the accident, I think it’s more likely that he was suffering from a medical issue – perhaps petite mal seizures or TIAs. . . . which brings me to another, far more salient point; if the conductor’s cabin was crushed to a depth of 6 inches and given the extreme violence of the crash, I don’t understand how it could possibly be determined what physical posture the driver was in at impact. His body must have been crushed and mangled beyond any recognition. Crushed organs, shattered bones, catastrophic skull fractures, etc. Getting body fluids out of the remains is fairly easy, so it makes sense that they were able to determine the man was intoxicated. Anything else? Eh, I seriously doubt it. Also, the accident happened long ago before modern scientific, forensic, and medical knowledge. In my opinion, there’s some “dramatic license” taken here. We also know eyewitnesses oftentimes misinterpret or mistake what they’ve seen and heard. The part of the narration where it’s said that witnesses describe the driver as staring straight ahead actually made me laugh a bit. I would be a hella lot more alarmed if he’d been turning his head, looking down, or whatever. I would WANT him to be “looking ahead”, for krissakes!

    For a similar conundrum, look up “Diane Schuler.” Her actions took her life, those of little children (including her own daughter), and all three men in the vehicle she hit head-on. Witnesses who saw her driving that day describe her as “staring straight ahead.” A store clerk she talked to not long before said she didn’t seem to be impaired on substances. The excellent documentary “There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane” is a must-see. It’s more a psychological mystery than a forensic one, really (why the accident occurred becomes obvious) but completely engrossing.

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