The European Railway Agency has published its fourth annual safety performance report.
Rail remains one of the safest forms of transport within in EU according to the report, ‘Railway Safety Performance in the European Union’.
Since 2006 there has been an improvement in safety and most of the recorded fatalities were ‘unauthorised’ people and users of level crossings.
However, Head of Safety at the ERA, Anders Lundström, said in the report: “In practice, the safety regulatory framework, as set out in the railway safety directive, is not working well”.
“Despite a positive trend in most safety indicators, there are some areas of railway safety which do not show improvements in the short term”.
According to the report, 1391 people were killed and 1114 seriously injured in 3073 EU railway accidents in 2009 which is ‘by far the lowest’ since 2006 (not including suicides).
Suicides accounted for 2700 deaths in 2009.
Passenger and employee fatalities made up 5% of all people killed on European railways excluding suicides.
By far, level crossing accidents accounted for the majority of fatalities, although this has decreased in recent years.
Collisions of trains, derailments and fires caused less than 3% of all deaths on the railways.
