financial statements at 31 december - Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane

Safety
The monitoring of accident rates on railways is based on accidents that are considered “serious” according to the
international criteria set out in Directive 2004/49/EC, which was transposed into the Italian legislation by Legislative
Decree no. 162/2007.
An accident is considered “serious” when at least one railway vehicle in movement is involved and if it has caused at least
one death or one serious injury, damage amounting to Euro 150,000 or more to tracks, systems or the environment or if
it has blocked traffic for 6 hours or more. They include accidents that have occurred on railway lines that are temporarily
interrupted or closed to traffic (depots, workshops) but exclude those caused by voluntary acts (suicide or vandalism). In
addition, the category of accidents includes both collisions with obstacles on the level crossing (vehicles etc.) and the
running over of persons who wrongfully cross the tracks when the level crossing is closed.
The list below reports the number of serious accidents that occurred on the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane Group’s network
managed by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana S.p.A., as broken down by type:
• 7 “collisions” of trains against 6 in 2011;
• 5 “derailments” of trains against 3 in 2011;
• 81 instances of “damage to persons” caused by moving rolling stock against 79 in 2011;
• 1 “other” accident against 2 in 2011;
• 13 at level crossings against 18 in 2011;
• 1 fire involving rolling stock against 0 in 2011.
In 2012 there were 108 serious accidents in all, the same as the previous year. Among the different types of serious
accident, there was a slight increase in collisions, derailments or accidents causing harm to persons. There was also a
case of rolling stock catching fire, a type of case not recorded in 2011. On the other hand there were fewer accidents
classified as “Others”, above all accidents at level crossings, of which there were 30% fewer than the previous year.
Macro-economic scenario
About four years after the explosion of the American financial crisis, the world’s economy is still struggling. During 2012
global economic growth weakened further, conditioned both by a slowdown in world trade and the persisting uncertainty
regarding the process of the consolidation of the public finances in the United States and the rising tensions on sovereign
debt in some Eurozone countries. In this scenario a substantial divergence continues to exist between advanced
economies’ contributions to world economic growth and those of the emerging and recently industrialised countries. The
economies of the last named, in fact, continued to grow in terms of percentage change in GDP in 2012 too (+5.1%),
driven above all by China (+7.8%) and India (+4.7%). The developed countries’ contribution (+1.3%), on the other
hand, was decidedly lower, the United States’ performance of + 2.3% being countered by a -0.4% drop in the Eurozone.
2012 Report on Operations 35