CRASS, insensitive, ignorant. The BBC's determination to screen a Casualty episode about a train crash during the week of the Great Heck inquest is all these things.

But what makes the corporation's decision so much worse is that it is an exact facsimile of a previous blunder.

In April 2001, two months after the Selby rail disaster which killed ten people, the Casualty crew mocked up an accident with spooky similarities to the real tragedy. The storyline called for an ambulance to crash through the wall of a bridge and plunge onto a railway line as trains sped towards it.

Survivors of Great Heck were shocked. The BBC's anonymous spokeswoman assured us that it was "mindful of the sensitivity involved". Mindful? Try mindless.

Off she then went, washing the fake blood off the corporation's hands, stating how "this storyline was written well before the Selby crash happened".

And that was it. No apology. No indication that anyone had spared a moment's consideration for the grieving and the injured. No suggestion that the Beeb might shelve or scrap the episode to save further anguish.

It was broadcast as scheduled on September 15, 2001, the "blockbuster" start to the 16th series.

To do this once suggests an error of judgement, or a certain bureaucratic arrogance. To do it again is profoundly offensive. This is more than mere carelessness, it shows a deliberate disdain for real victims.

Freakily, the pattern is exactly the same. The BBC is to screen a fictional Casualty train crash as the "blockbuster" start to its 18th series. Despite the anguish of Great Heck survivors, it will go out as scheduled, on September 13, 2003, at the end of a week when they had to relive their trauma for the coroner.

Once again, the faceless BBC is in denial, stating "this latest story plan was devised a year ago", as if that absolves the corporation from all responsibility.

Again there is no apology, no admission that what was described as Casualty's "unfortunate timing" could easily be altered to lessen the heartache.

Saturday's episode took "24 days to film and involved a cast of 1,470. It took a heck of a lot of fake blood too," the Radio Times reports, its words so ill-chosen they could grace a Casualty script. All these hundreds of people working for so long on one episode, and not one thought to check out any possible real-life repercussions. And that after the anger Casualty had caused only two years earlier.

You might hope that BBC bosses would think twice about their output's impact on ordinary people after the Dr Kelly affair. But the Beeb, it seems, is too important to be bothered with such trivialities as the feelings of those who pay for it.

Television producers should also ask themselves why some disaster victims are considered fairer game than others. Why are replications of plane and train crashes thought to be more suitable for peak time entertainment than, say, a reconstruction of a madman on a shooting spree?

Why has a plane hijacked by terrorists never crashed into a Holby skyscraper, yet Casualty writers are happy to plunder the Great Heck accident not once but twice? Are the New York dead somehow more revered than the North Yorkshire dead?

Finally, TV viewers should demand originality. Writers will get away with serving up the same stale fare again and again if we keep watching. Casualty's obsession with Great Heck is the grisliest example of the BBC's well-documented obsession with repeats.

Updated: 12:12 Wednesday, September 10, 2003