UIC: Railway safety achieves a record high
Rail transport is the safest mode of overland transport and is improving continuously in terms of safety, as the International Union of Railways (UIC) demonstrates in its latest report on railway accidents.
Accidents and numbers of victims were reduced by almost 17% between 2013 and 2018. 2018 saw a 2% improvement compared to 2017, with a total of 1,746 significant accidents recorded. This is the lowest number of accidents since 2006.
74% of the accidents were caused by trespassing on railway infrastructure, 15% at level crossings. No more than 1% of the accidents involved people being hit on a platform or falling from a train or platform. 7% were attributed to internal causes and 2% were caused by weather and environmental conditions. (ben)