Statistics Explained

Archive:Rail accident fatalities in the EU

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Source: Eurostat (educ_ilang)

Main statistical findings

In 2013, 1 982 significant railway accidents have been registered in the EU-28, in which a total of 1 130 persons were killed; another 912 persons have been seriously injured. At the level of the EU (however without Croatia and Luxembourg for time series consistency), the number of fatalities has gradually decreased, from 1 517 in 2007 to 1 109 in 2013 (-27%). Railway suicides are reported separately, and with 2 819 reported cases in 2013, these outnumber by a considerable margin the victims accounted for in the railway safety statistics. Railway safety data are collected by the European Railway Agency within the so-called Common Safety Indicators since 2006. However, the Member States were obliged to adopt the common definitions only since 2010, thus only data from 2010 onwards are fully harmonized. As soon as the data are consolidated, these are published through ERA’s ERAIL database and ERA’s website (see also Methodological Notes). Eurostat publishes ERA’s data through its dissemination database Eurobase. This article highlights selected elements.

4% less accidents in 2013 compared with 2012

The number of railway accidents has been declining between 2007 and 2013 (see Figure 2). At EU level (however without Croatia and Luxembourg for time series consistency), the number has been reduced by nearly half since 2007 (from 3 811 to 1 946 accidents). Compared with 2012, the number of accidents declined by nearly 4%, but not in all categories: the numbers of collisions, derailments and fires in rolling stock have increased, if not substantially (data not shown). Please note that accident figures are only reliable from 2010 onwards as per the application of common definitions. Belgium, Poland and Slovakia typically reported all railway accidents in the past, instead of the significant accidents only. This led to a lower count in several categories of accidents since 2010.

Looking at the detailed 2013 figures, the largest single category of accidents at EU-28 level are accidents to persons caused by rolling stock in motion, representing 58% of all accidents. Typically, these are accidents involving persons that are on the railway tracks (so called trespassers) and get hit by a running train. Accidents at level crossings, including pedestrians, is the other important category, with a total number of 510 accidents (26% of the total). Together, these accidents represent 84% of the total number of significant accidents.

Table 1 also shows that Poland, Germany and Hungary have registered the highest number of accidents in absolute terms. Seventeen percent of all accidents (or 328 accidents) recorded in the EU-28 in 2013 occurred in Poland, 15% in Germany and 9% in Hungary. In Ireland and Luxembourg, three accidents occurred in 2013. The Channel Tunnel is listed as a separate entity as a distribution between France and the United Kingdom cannot be made. A single accident was reported in the Channel Tunnel: a fire in rolling stock, in which nobody was injured or killed.

Persons seriously injured: noticeable decline since 2008, especially among level crossing users

When observing the 2007-2013 time span at the level of the EU (without Croatia and Luxembourg), a general downward trend is noted: whereas the average annual decrease of the total number of seriously injured persons amounted to an average 6.9% per year, those in the category of the level crossing users decreased stronger (-8.5% annually on average). The average annual decrease among railway passengers, characterised by a peak in 2010 (influenced by the severe train collision in Buizingen, south of Brussels), was far lower, at 5.4% per year. Without the most serious single train accident of 2013, the derailment of a high-speed train in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in July that year, this decrease would have been far more important.

Focusing on the year 2013, Table 2 shows that the pattern drawn for the various accident categories is reflected by the number of persons injured. Most persons seriously injured were counted in accidents involving rolling stock in motion (438 persons, or 48% of the total) followed by level crossing accidents (307 persons, or 34%).

Far less persons were injured in the other types of accidents. Train collisions claimed 32 seriously injured persons in 2013 (2012: 120), the majority of which could be attributed to only 2 countries: Romania and Austria. The comparison of seriously injured persons between countries may be slightly biased due to differences in reporting regimes.

Persons killed in rail accidents: most are unauthorised persons on railway premises

Figure one at the beginning of this article shows the absolute number of persons killed in railway accidents and emphasises the fact that only a fraction of the registered fatalities are actually railway passengers. The total number of fatalities has gradually declined from 1 517 persons in 2007 to 1 109 persons in 2012 (EU aggregate without Croatia and Luxembourg to ensure equal coverage), a decrease of 27%. Railway passengers constitute a minor share in these fatalities: in both 2011 and 2012, the proportion was only 3%; in 2013, however, the 97 fatalities registered represented close to 9% of the total number of killed. This increase can solely be attributed to the aforementioned accident in Santiago de Compostela in July 2013, with 79 fatalities (representing all of Spain’s fatalities in the category “Railway passengers” and 81% of the fatalities in that category at EU-28 level – see Table 3). Without this single accident, the proportion of railway passengers in total rail fatalities would only amount to 1.7%.

Nevertheless, rail transport remains a very safe mode of transport. The ERA has estimated that over the past three years, the fatality risk for passengers travelling on board of trains was 0.13 fatalities per 1 000 million passenger kilometres, a value close to the risk experienced by aircraft passengers and by one third lower compared to the risk for a bus/coach passenger in Europe.

At EU-28 level, the fatalities counted among unauthorised persons and level crossing users constituted 87% of all rail accident fatalities.

The Santiago de Compostela accident also represents the lion’s share among the fatalities in the category “Derailments” of Table 4, where the number of fatalities broken down by type of accident in 2013 is displayed. In the entire EU, no fatalities were reported for “Fires in rolling stock”. Expectedly, it is again accidents to persons by rolling stock in motion (724 fatalities, or 64% of the total) and level crossing accidents (307 victims, or 27% of the total) that claimed most lives.

Suicides on railway premises outnumber the killed and seriously injured in accidents by far

It has been mentioned that suicides are reported. The number of suicides on railway premises was on the rise in 2010-2012 and amounted to just under 3 000 in 2012; in 2013, 2 819 suicides on railway premises were registered. The number of suicides on rail premises is significant in all MSs. With 834 suicides in 2013, Germany alone accounted for close to 30% of the EU-28 total. It is not easy to address measures aiming at preventing suicides on railway premises. Barriers are often built at hot spots and railway station personnel are given training to cope with situations when suicide attempts may be expected.

Data sources and availability

The sources used for the statistics in this publication are data reported to the European Railway Agency (ERA – http://era.europa.eu).

Context

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Railway safety data have been collected by the ERA since 2006 within the so-called Common Safety Indicators (CSIs), introduced by Annex I of the Railway Safety Directive (Directive 2004/49/EC). Member States have a legal obligation to submit their CSI data to the ERA. The Agency publishes an Overview of safety-related CSIs as soon as data are consolidated. The CSIs data are reported via, and available through ERAIL system at http://erail.era.europa.eu. The full set of CSI data is made available in the annually published Railway Safety Performance Report.

Eurostat has an agreement with the ERA to disseminate the data through Eurobase. The data available is a selection of data available at the ERA.

Please note that railway accident data are also collected through Annex H of the Regulation providing for statistical returns on railway traffic and transport (Regulation (EC) 91/2003). However, this data collection is foreseen to be phased out, as similar data are available through the ERA. Therefore, similar data can still be found elsewhere in the Eurobase data tree, namely under the “Railway transport” sub-domain, in the section “Railway transport - Accidents (rail_ac)” whereas the ERA data are located in the “Horizontal multi-modal information (tran)” under “Transport safety (tran_sf)”.

Comparing these data might occasionally reveal differences as the ERA handles its own compilation procedures and quality checks. Also, whereas data are reported to the ERA by the national safety authorities, data reported to Eurostat in the framework of Regulation 91/2003 are reported by the National Statistical Offices. The latter might depend on data from the same national authorities, but not necessarily so.

See also

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Composition of EU aggregates

EU-28: European Union composed of 28 Member States: Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), Estonia (EE), Ireland (IE), Greece (EL), Spain (ES), France (FR), Croatia (HR), Italy (IT), Cyprus (CY), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Luxembourg (LU), Hungary (HU), Malta (MT), the Netherlands (NL), Austria (AT), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Slovenia (SI), Slovakia (SK), Finland (FI), Sweden (SE) and the United Kingdom (UK). Please note that Cyprus, Malta and Iceland do not feature any railways. Liechtenstein's railways are operated by ÖBB and included in the Austrian data.

The tables in this publication include the Channel Tunnel as separate entity. Data referring to the Channel Tunnel cannot be attributed to either France or the United Kingdom. Channel Tunnel figures are always included in the EU aggregates.

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