Chapter 17 Rail Safety

This chapter reviews the safety of railway operation in Europe particularly by examining the causes of fatalities over periods of up to three decades ending in 2017. Fatalities are examined to passengers, staff, level crossing users, and trespassers, together with a brief look at suicides. The accidents that attract most attention are fatal train collisions and derailments because they can result in multiple fatalities, and are in most cases wholly the responsibility of the railway operators. However, train accidents are infrequent, and account for only about 1% of all railway fatalities if suicides are included, or 3% if they are not. The fatal train accident rate per train-kilometre fell at a rate of 5.4% per year between 1990 and 2017 and was 77% lower in 2017 than it had been in 1990. This chapter goes on to discuss level crossings, which account for far more fatalities than train accidents, personal accidents, accidents to trespassers, and suicides. This chapter ends with a brief look at the evidence of the effect of rail restructuring on safety.