http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/safety/2014-safest-year-on-record.html?channel=60
Safest year to date.
Think about it - today, if a railway worker dies as the result of an on-the-job “incident” - it’s a film-at-11" event. The local news covers it. Not that many years ago, there was such a thing as an expected number of casualties.
Your point is?
It must be a mistake. After all, we don’t have PTC, ECP, on board sensors (derailed equipment, hot axle, etc) or any of the other gizmos or procedures called for by safety experts in government or on this forum deployed nation wide in everyday use.
Jeff
On the other hand, we still had over 1700 accidents in 2014, no few of which might have been either avoided or mitigated by sensors, gizmos, procedures or other things…
I would also play devil’s advocate a bit and note that this report appears to be statistics-based, with no indication of severity of accidents being noted in the release. That might well mean, for example, that there were even better safety gains in some areas – say, those associated with better safety awareness gotten from better or more effective safety meetings or training – but the numbers were dragged down by “exploding” oil trains and the like. As I understand the methodology, an incident involving a crushed toe ‘counts’ the same as a sky full of progressive combustion for purposes of the analysis. Non-statisticians might view this somewhat differently…
Those stats exist on the FRA web site.
+1
There often is a case for regulation-improved safety since not all the benefits wind up in the pocket of those who have to pay for the improvment. The problem is the path idea to implementation is often a hot mess, particularly of late.
Those stats are probably low. In the fire business, if you die as a result of a heart attack or other such issue within 24 hours of an incident, it counts as a line of duty death.
Last year we were under 100 deaths nation-wide in the fire service, but less than 30 were actual traumatic incidents. The rest were health-related or the result of accidents enroute or returning.
If a company official is killed in an accident on a public highway, does that count against railroad safety?
If he is on duty, yes.
Yes, even if he is hog-lawed and on his way into the barn. Seen that happen to several parked crew vans not to long ago.
The oil&gas + trucking industry are ever so slowly following the rail industry’s lead…but the media won’t get the hint or understand the big difference in safety performance. Still, any death or injury is not acceptable and there is a long way still to go.