The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), the British rail industry’s independent safety body, has released a report with a comprehensive analysis of safety at the road-rail interface. In addition to level crossing safety, the RSSB report also addresses vehicular incursions at road-over-rail bridges and elsewhere along railway rights of way.
The report explains the wider context of improving trends in railway safety and the extent to which the risk at the road-rail interface stands out because it has not declined at the same rate as risks wholly within the control of the rail industry.
By virtue of improvements in other areas, road-rail interface risk now represents almost half of all train accident risk. It is of note that two of the three most recent multi-fatality train accidents were caused by road vehicles.
Because most level crossings risk arises from road user behaviour the British rail industry has therefore focussed on mitigating the risk at the road-rail interface through the combined actions of the Road-Rail Interface Safety Group (R-RISG) and the specific actions of Network Rail, the rail infrastructure manager and law enforcement agencies, principally British Transport Police. Recognition has also been given to world-wide good practice, expressed through the three E approach of Operation Lifesaver – Engineering, Education and Enforcement supplemented by Engagement and Evaluation to give the British five rather then three E approach.
In Britain there has not been a multi-fatality interface accident since that at Ufton in November 2004 which was caused by the actions of a suicidal motorist. In this accident five passengers and the train driver died along with the motorist who set out to take his own life
Accidents and incidents occurring at the road-rail interface in Britain (including level crossings, bridge strikes and incursions through fences, bridges and access points) account for approximately 12.5 fatalities and weighted injuries (1 fatality = 10 serious injuries) per year and represent 9% of the total system risk (excluding intentional deaths).
The report shows that level crossing safety performance in the UK compares favourably with other European Union Member States. The UK has the lowest risk across the Member States, being nearly ten times lower than the average for the European Union as a whole.
This RSSB report examines the road-rail interface safety performance recorded on Network Rail’s infrastructure over the last ten years and the estimated underlying level of risk derived from version 6 of the RSSB managed Safety Risk Model (SRMv6). SRMv6 estimates that 8% (11.8 FWI per year) of the total system risk occurs at level crossings. This includes risk to train occupants as a result of road user behaviour, as well as risk to level crossing users (vehicle occupants and pedestrians excluding those whose death was intentional or suspected to be so).
In Great Britain, the report shos there to have been 80 pedestrian fatalities at level crossings in the last ten years, an average of eight per year, although in 2006 there were five fatalities and in 2008 there were 13. These figures exclude intentional deaths and suspected intentional deaths.
With the exception of a low of 11 collisions recorded in 2006 and 2007, the number of collisions between trains and road vehicles at level crossings has remained broadly constant over the last ten years. On average, there are around 16 collisions per year.
Vehicle incursions at other than level crossings over the last ten years have caused 15 fatalities arising from incursions over the last ten years: five occurred to road vehicle occupants and ten to train occupants in the Great Heck accident on February 28th, 2001.
There have been 42 road vehicles struck on the running line away from level crossings in the last ten years, five of which have caused derailments. 12 fatalities resulted from these 42 incidents.
The number of intentional and suspected intentional deaths at level crossings is generally excluded from the statistics for accidental harm. However, the report does address these deaths which in 2009 represented around 15% of the overall number of intentional deaths, whereas the proportion was lower in the early years of the decade. Although most of these fatalities involve pedestrians, a small number involve motorists positioning their vehicle so that it will be struck by a train. This was the situation at Ufton when such an event also killed the train driver and a number of passengers. The pattern of intentional death at level crossings is shown in the table below. |
