Railway safety performance in the European Union

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Similarly, as in previous years, a number of NSAs have reported changes in their reporting procedures or the definitions applied in the data collection. These are reflected in several figures such as Figure 5. For serious injuries, the reported numbers of injured passengers and unauthorised persons for the period from 2007 to 2009 show large variations beyond what might be expected from natural fluctuation. Over the period 2007–2009 there were four seriously injured passengers per one killed passenger while the numbers of all seriously and fatally injured persons were on equal level. At the same time, there were two fatally injured unauthorised persons per one seriously injured person in the same category of victims. This reflects the vulnerability of persons when hit by a train, on the one hand, and the difference in the chance of survival for passengers and trespassers on the other hand. The slight decrease in the number of victims in recent years, rail passengers in particular, is promising. The corresponding risk level for passengers in terms of victims per passenger-km has been decreasing at the same pace, as the volume of passengers has not changed over time. Suicides Suicides are reported separately from accident fatalities. Suicides represent 66 % of all fatalities and, together with the unauthorised person fatalities, constitute 72 % of all fatalities occurring within the railway system. No trend can be derived from the available data, but as it appears, the number of suicides registered in 2009 is the highest value reported to the Agency (Figure 6). The Member States use different methods for establishing whether a fatality is a suicide or not. The revised Annex 1 and its guidance will lead to a more harmonised approach to classifying suicides. 4 500 4 000 Figure 6. Suicides and other fatalities (2007–2009) 3 500 3 000 1 519 1 480 1 391 2 500 2 000 1 500 1 000 2 630 2 429 2 719 500 0 2007 2008 2009 • Suicides • Other persons 20
Precursors to accidents Given the fact that accidents on railways are rare, the monitoring of less serious events occurring on railways is an essential tool in a proactive safety management system (SMS). ‘Precursors to accidents’ are indicators measuring incidents that under other circumstances could have led to an accident. There are indicators for broken rails, track buckles, signals passed at danger, wrong-side signalling failures, broken wheels and broken axles (Figure 7). Over the period 2007–2009, Member States reported as many as 4.5 precursors per one significant accident. This gives an impression of the learning potential in monitoring them. The reported number of track buckles shows substantial variations over time and it seems impossible to determine any underlying patterns for groups of countries. As a matter of fact, developments observed at country level vary greatly. Unusual weather conditions give a natural variation in the number of track buckles. The use of data quality control has, however, revealed that the observed variation in some Member States is the result of changes in reporting practice. The number of broken rails is also sensitive to the weather conditions and may not fully reflect the quality of work done by IMs. The incidence of broken rails decreased substantially in 2009, but this fall most likely reflects drops in the number of broken rails registered in individual countries such as Poland (from 2 396 in 2008 to 1 506 in 2009) and Hungary (from 716 in 2008 to 10 in 2009). Since 2009, Poland has only reported broken rails causing a disruption to railway traffic. Figure 7: Accident precursors in all countries and in the subsets of countries (2007–2009) ( 5 ) 6 000 HU, IT, LT 5 000 4 000 DE, LT, PL 3 000 EE, IT, LT 2 000 LT, UK 1 000 0 Broken rails Track buckles Wrong side signalling failures Signals passed at danger Broken wheels Broken axles • 2007 • 2008 • 2009 ( 5 ) Besides excluding some countries due to changes in definitions, Austria is not included in the dataset for broken rails and Greece for track buckles, as they did not report relevant data for the entire period. 21
Page 1: 2011 Railway safety performance in
Page 5 and 6: Contents 6 Foreword 8 Summary 12 Re
Page 7 and 8: ATP CSI CSM CA CSTs ECM ERA ERADIS
Page 9 and 10: This is the fourth annual report by
Page 11 and 12: Railways remain one of the safest m
Page 14 and 15: 12 Reporting on serious and signifi
Page 16 and 17: Reporting by safety authorities Rep
Page 18 and 19: 16 Safety performance
Page 20 and 21: Fatalities and serious injuries In
Page 24 and 25: The drop in the number of wrong-sid
Page 26 and 27: . . Infrastructure Three CSIs conce
Page 28 and 29: . Figure 11: Percentage of level cr
Page 30 and 31: 28 Reporting accidents by the inves
Page 32 and 33: Table 3: Average time span between
Page 34 and 35: 32 Major EU rail accidents in 2010
Page 36 and 37: Event: Date, time and location: Out
Page 38 and 39: Event: Date, time and location: Out
Page 40: Event: Date, time and location: Out
Page 43 and 44: Assessing safety management systems
Page 45 and 46: Safety certificates issued In 2009,
Page 48 and 49: 46 Economic evaluation of safety
Page 50 and 51: 48 Looking forward
Page 52 and 53: Annexes 51 Annex 1 — Common safet
Page 54 and 55: CSI data tables Figures with a gree
Page 56 and 57: Table 3A — 2006 — Fatalities by
Page 58 and 59: Table 3C — 2008 — Fatalities by
Page 60 and 61: Table 4A — 2006 — Serious injur
Page 62 and 63: Table 4C — 2008 — Serious injur
Page 64 and 65: Table 5 — Total and relative no o
Page 66 and 67: Table 7 — Number of precursors to
Page 68 and 69: Table 10 — Technical safety of in
Page 70 and 71: Table Country Year Variable Comment
Page 72 and 73:
Annex 2 — List of national safety
Page 74 and 75:
Key documents and references Regula
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Railway safety performance in the European Union

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