Network Rail owns and operates the railway infrastructure in England, Wales, and Scotland covering 20,000 miles of track, 40,000 bridges and viaducts, and thousands of tunnels, signals, level crossings, and points. Level crossings, also known as railroad crossings or train crossings, are a core concern for Network Rail as they work to improve safety and increase the railway network. In the last seven years, there have been more than 2,000 incidents involving young people at level crossings and five fatalities. VR based online learning is a solution which can aid in solving this issue.
There are over 6,000 level crossings across the network. While infrastructure technology has greatly improved the safety at level crossings, Network Rail wanted to further improve upon the safety of level crossings by reaching out effectively to at-risk demographics, such as young people aged under 25.