In total there were 910 fatalities on Europe's railways in 2014, with less than 1% of these passengers and 2% staff. Trespassers and level crossing users account for 97% of all fatalities, with 625 trespassers, and 241 people killed at level crossings. Of all accidents recorded, 18% were caused by technical, organisational, or human failures inside the railway operating system.
This year's report also includes the new UIC Global Safety Index (GSI), which weighs each accident by the type, number and category of victims, and responsibility. This prevents isolated and infrequent major events excessively impacting the overall safety trend, and shows that with a rating of 8.39, 2014 was the safest year yet, and that safety has improved by 33% since the database was first compiled in 2006.
The 910 fatalities in 2014 compare with 1042 in 2013, and 1022 in 2013. According to DG Move's Care study, there were 25,700 road fatalities across the 27 EU member states in 2014.
Traffic on the European rail network amounted to 4.1 billion train-km in 2014, including 4 billion passenger train-km and more than 200 billion tonne-km.
The full report is available here.
