Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

E3: Transport

5 Rue Alphonse Weicker, L-2721 Luxembourg, LUXEMBOURG G-D

The rail accident data are provided to Eurostat by the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA). The ERA manages and is responsible for the entire data collection. The Eurostat data constitute a part of the data collected by ERA and are part of the so-called Common Safety Indicators (CSIs). In Eurobase, the following data are available:

• Number of rail accidents by type of accident
• Number of rail accident victims by type of accident
• Number of rail accidents involving the transport of dangerous goods
• Number of suicides involving railways. 

Rail accident data were previously collected through Annex H of the Regulation (EC) No 91/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2002 on rail transport statistics. This regulation has been recast by Regulation (EU) 2018/643 on rail transport statistics - the data collection through Annex H was phased out and replaced with the data colected by ERA.

Few candidate countries continued to provide data following the previous regulation. Data for Montenegro, North Macedonia and Turkiye comes from Annex H until 2016, 2018 and 2021 reference year respectively.

The data available in Eurobase are part of ERA’s Common Safety Indicators (CSIs). The CSIs are statistics collected at European level with the purpose specified in the Annex I to the Directive (EU) 2016/798 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016 on railway safety: “In order to facilitate assessment of the achievement of the CSTs [common safety targets] and to provide for the monitoring of the general development of railway safety, Member States shall collect information on CSIs through the annual reports of the national safety authorities referred to in Article 19” (Article 5 of Directive (EU) 2016/798).

CSIs are not expected to provide the same level of detail as the safety databases of National Safety Authorities (NSAs), of railway undertakings and of infrastructure managers, which are tailored to their specific needs. CSIs have to provide for the monitoring of the ‘general’ development of railway safety in the EU Member States and of the Union.

Not applicable

The Common Safety Indicators (CSIs) is set of indicators allowing to measure railway safety performance of Member States and provides objective evidence of the development over time within Member States. Accidents data are also used for estimating national reference values, setting common safety targets and assessing their achievement.

Data are imported from the ERA database based on a common agreement between ERA and Eurostat. The Eurobase tables available are the result of this agreement.

In 2010, for the first time, the NSAs had to report using the CSI definitions provided. As a consequence, the 2010 CSI data represent the first fully harmonised set of figures, as the use of national definitions was no longer permitted.

The data used in the domain are collected by the different data providers at accident level, aggregated and sent to the European Railway Agency.

All accident occurrences recorded by the responsible national authorities

The ERA covers the EU Member States plus Norway. A separate reporting entity is the Channel Tunnel. Please note that Malta and Cyprus are not covered as these countries do not have railways.

2006 is the first reference year for which data are available. Data availability improves with time, both in terms of geographical coverage and the level of detail available.

Not applicable

The unit of measure is either the number of accidents, or the number of persons that have been seriously injured or killed in railway accidents. For the table on suicides, the unit is the number of persons.

‘Accident’ in this respect means an unwanted or unintended sudden event or a specific chain of such events which have harmful consequences; accidents are divided into the following categories: collisions, derailments, level crossing accidents, accidents to persons caused by rolling stock in motion, fires and others;

‘Killed person’ means any person killed immediately or dying within 30 days as a result of an accident, excluding any suicide.

‘Seriously injured person’ means any person injured who was hospitalised for more than 24 hours as a result of an accident, excluding any attempted suicides.

A separate table is available with information on the number of suicides involving railways.

Data is initially collected by the RUs and IMs, who submit them to their NSA by end June of the year following the reference period. The NSA consolidates and validates the data and forward them to the ERA by end September of the year following the reference period. The ERA checks the data for consistency and quality and validate them in its ERAIL database.

The legal act at the basis of the available statistical data is Directive (EU) 2016/798. More specifically, reporting details are laid down in Annex 1 and Appendix to the mentioned legal act.

Not applicable

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

All data released by the ERA are not confidential. Hence, this also applies to the data available in the various Eurobase tables which indicate the ERA as data source.

Data is disseminated on an annual basis.

Following ERA

In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10 - 'Accessibility and clarity') respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.

Annual

News item is published on Eurostat website on the date of update of the Statistics Explained article.

Statistics Explained article - Railway safety statistics in the EU - annual data (one update per year)

Eurostat publication - Key figures on European transport - 2023 edition

ERA publication - Railway Safety and Interoperability in the EU (biennial report) - 2022 edition

Please consult free data on-line (Transport/Multimodal data/Transport safety).

Not applicable

Not applicable

A complete documentation on the CSI variables collected and their definition is available in the document entitled “Implementation guidance for CSIs” and is available under:

https://www.era.europa.eu/system/files/2022-11/Implementation%20guidance%20for%20CSIs.pdf

See 11.1

CSIs made available by the ERA have been undergoing various vertical and horizontal consistency, plausibility and other quality checks.

As agreed in the Memorandum of Understanding, Eurostat does not alter the ERA data received, not does it apply any additional checks.

Under the provisions of the Memorandum of understanding between the ERA and EUROSTAT, the two Agencies cooperate in assuring the data compatibility with other modes of transport and assuring the reliability of data disseminated

No information available.

Statistics on rail accident fatalities in individual countries are often available at aggregated level only. If more detailed data are made available, they often cannot be compared with those of other countries due to methodological differences.

The tables available in Eurobase containing a selection of ERA data are harmonised and comparable. This especially applies from the reference year 2010 onwards, when data had to be reported according to common definitions and national ‘particularities’ were no longer allowed.

ERA regularly reviews the user satisfaction through surveys organized mainly within its working parties.

Completeness of data is assured from 2010 onwards; prior to that year, the data are not always available for all countries.

Overall accuracy of data is good as the ERA data collection is “mature”. Strictly the same concepts and definitions are applied by countries from reference year 2010 onwards.

Not applicable

Not applicable

Depending on ERA's relase calender

Not applicable

Following ERA

Following ERA

Following ERA

Not applicable

No information available

The general Eurostat revision policy applies to this domain.

All reported errors (once validated) result in corrections of the disseminated data. Reported errors are corrected in the disseminated data as soon as the correct data have been validated and transmitted by ERA. Data may be published even if they are flagged as provisional for certain countries. They are replaced with final data once they are validated and transmitted by ERA. Whenever new data are provided and validated, the already disseminated data are updated.

Data are collected and/or compiled by the National Safety Authorities at single accident level. Compiled annual datasets are then transmitted to the ERA

Annual

For the ERA data available in Eurobase, data are retrieved from the ERA database and are transmitted to Eurostat. Eurostat calculates EU aggregates and prepares the datafiles for uploading in Eurobase.

Data validation procedures are applied by the ERA. Eurostat takes over the data as such and does not apply any supplementary validation procedures.

Data compilations are performed by the ERA, with the exception of some EU aggregates that are calculated by Eurostat.

Not applicable

Not applicable