Nearly 50 people have been killed after taking shortcuts and trespassing across the railway tracks in the last year, according to Network Rail. To highlight this, it has teamed up with British and World 400m hurdles champion Dai Greene to warn young men about the dangers of taking a short cut across the tracks. Shockingly, 88% of accidental trespass fatalities in the last ten years were male with over a third aged 16-25.

Dai appears in an online video, part of a new campaign launched last week (Wednesday 9 May 2012) called “Track Tests”. Dai is given a realistic but unusual running test – across the tracks – but it’s not as easy as it seems, even for a top athlete at the peak of his condition. It’s dark, there’s grease on the line, unexpected trip hazards and it’s raining. It aims to illustrate that if a fit, agile athlete used to leaping high hurdles at speed, is unable to get out of the way of a train travelling at 80mph, then you won’t either. The video will be part of a new Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/TrackTests and online/mobile advertising campaign over the next four weeks.

Dai Greene explained why he was keen to get involved with this new campaign...