One unconscionable statistic gleaned from The History Channel’s “Freight Trains” on Modern Marvels the other night:
Between 1890 and 1917, there were 230,000 on-the-job deaths of railroad employees in this country.
Compare that to 291,557 U.S. servicemen killed in battle during World War II.
On the railroad, that comes to about 8,200 per year during that period, or 23 each day.
EDIT: to correct math
I would be interested in knowing what today’s statistics are. In other words, how many railroad employees are killed or seriously injured every day while doing their jobs. I am also interested in knowing how many idiots and nuckleheads are killed or seriously injured every day while trespassing on railroad property. I would make the argument that railroading today is no less dangerous than it was in 1917.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
Its actually 23. Remember, this was in a time where railroads werent that safe.
“It’s actually 23.” I personally think that 23 is still too many.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
I wonder if a lot of that had to do with railroad construction related deaths more than the actual railroading aspect of it. You always read about really long tunnel such and such and 200 workers died during its construction, and so on.
Plain old statistics dictates a drop in fatalities - witness the drastic reduction in employees evidenced in the recent Trains article.
The railroads are much more safety concious now. At one time, your average brakeman was essentially a throw-away commodity. They were expected to be killed on the job. There were some common job practices (like poling) that we would look at today and say “what were they thinking?”
A truer measure of the number of deaths would be per hour worked. Per ton-mile would also provide a fair comparison.
To steal a commonly used truism about the airlines - you’re probably safer working on the railroad than you are driving to work!
That’s not to say that there’s an excuse for fatalities and injuries. We’re not much different in the fire service, where we lost about 115 last year. We’re studying it, though, and trying to impress on firefighters how they can be safer. And healthier. Would you believe that around half of those deaths were due to heart attacks? And around a quarter of them were in motor vehicle accidents…
What I found shocking is that the deaths in those nearly 30 years was well more than the total railroad work force today.
Practices are different now from then, as people have mentioned. But you still hear about fatalities every so often. I don’t have figures handy, but I suspect that it’s now under 100 per year. I can remember two during my 35 years at Proviso (there may have been more). Plus another three or four who died on the job with heart attacks and the like, and, unfortunately, two people who were shot by a disgruntled former employee. I don’t know if those figure in the statistics or not. I do know that any time an operating employee is killed on any railroad around here, we hear about it.
Fatalities in any line of work are appropriately shocking, and should be heard about. I would also be interested in any statistics that might show the incidents of tinnitis or other such degenerative diseases or conditions which lead to fatalities going down…
Try here for your numbers.
Broken down by type.
http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/OfficeofSafety/Query/Default.asp?page=statsSas.asp
ACCIDENT/INCIDENT OVERVIEW
SELECTION: RAILROAD - ALL / January TO June, 2006
TOTAL ACCIDENTS/INCIDENTS: 6,178 Number of fatal accidents/incidents 385 6.23%
Overall frequency rate: 15.32 Total train miles: 403,193,795
Total fatalities: 418 Switching miles: 44,186,688
Total nonfatal conditions: 3,748 Employee hours: 242,800,104
Total accidents/incidents is the sum of train accidents, highway-rail incidents, and other incidents.
Total accident/incident rate is the number of events times 1,000,000 divided by total train miles.
TOTAL TRAIN ACCIDENTS: 1,368 Number of fatal train accidents 1 0.07%
Number per million train miles: 3.39 Collisions: 89 6.51%
Total fatalities: &nb
I get an e-mail notification for every line-of-duty firefighter death. It’s a safety awareness thing (from the website www.firefighterclosecalls.com). They average about two a week. A firefighter in South Carolina was killed today while working at a hydrant…
Any are too many. We can only learn from the mistakes and try not to do the same things.
Actually, done by crews who knew their stuff, poling wasn’t unsafe. If it had been, there wouldn’t have been poling pockets on the corners of engines and cars, nor poles supplied for that purpose.
Ol’ Ed
One thing we’ve got to remember is that there was virtually no medical treatment 100 years ago. “Doctor” training was hit and miss with no real standards. There were no antibiotics - which meant people could, and did, die from a small cut or a scratch.
J.D. Rockerfeller, whoes father “called” himself a “doctor”, actually did significant good with his money. One of the good things he did was help establish standards for medical schools. He’d give 'em money if they met the standards. Before that you could call yourself a “doctor” with six months of “medical” school.
When considering the fatalities of 100 years ago it’s important to remember that if you got hurt back then they weren’t going to load you into a helicopter and take you to a trauma center where virtually unlimited resources were spent on your health.
Railroad cars and cabooses were wood and lighted by fire. I wonder how many of those fatalities were caused by fire?
And, as always, we’ve got to put things in context. The railroad fatalities of 100 years ago must be taken in context with everyday life. I have a wonderful 100 year old aunt whoes father was killed when his head was under a wheel of a farm wagon and the horse team moved. He was evidently trying to retrive something from under the wagon when the team moved slightly.
Happened all the time every day back then. We’re pampered and spoiled in comparison, but I wonder what the folks in 2106 will think of the way we “had” to live.
To add a little more context. In 1890 an American white male had a life expectancy of 43 years. In 1900 it was 48 and 50 in 1910. (Having an idea of the ages of its members, this forum would be a graveyard if that were still the case.) Back then people died like flies from diseases (cholera, malaria, typhus, etc.) and infections that are unknown or trivial to treat today in the U.S. TB was also common. The first autos were appearing at that time, and they probably had an extremely high fatality rate. Other common occupations of that era that would be considered to have unacceptable fatality rates today: farming, logging, construction, and sailing. (I couldn’t find sources for these.) Relative to the other risks in life, I’ll bet railroading didn’t seem that risky at the time.
Well, railroading as an occupation was more risky than most back then. I understand the unions started out as mutual insurance groups because the regular insurance companies wouldn’t write policies on railroad men.
These guys were living life at a “high speed” with no train communication, walking along the tops of moving boxcars in freezing rain, etc.
But context is important, and you’re probably right. The first automobiles probably had accident/injury/fatality rates that would be “shocking” today. As did the factories, coal mines, hospitals, everything.
For comparison:
Total Number of Coal Mining Fatalities in U.S. from 1900 through 2005: 104,574
God spare me from journalists.
You can’t just take the number of fatalities. You have to take the fatalities compared to the number of workers.
Everything needs to be put into context to understand it. Maybe coal mining was more/less dangerous than railroading. We won’t know unless we know the rate per worker of injury/fatality.
The absolute number with no context tells no one anything.
One thing’s for sure, it was a lot more dangerous 100 years ago.
Which has me wondering…what is the fatality rate for journalists? And 100 years ago? LOL!
God spare me from know-it-alls who in their rush to argue ignore the main premise.
So let me put it into context so you can understand it. The discussion wasn’t to determine whether mining was more dangerous than railroading. The point you missed was that years ago, for a variety of reasons, jobs like railroading and mining were far more dangerous than they are today. That’s it. Period.
For some reason, railroad and mine workers were considered more expendable during those eras. What’s the death rate for white-collar office workers over the same period?
One of today’s most dangerous jobs is firefighting, and last year it saw 115 deaths, as tree68 pointed out. Compare that to those other numbers from turn-of-the-century railroading and mining and you’ll understand the point.
It is ironic how we allow for “acceptable losses.” I.E., some people make a huge issue that we’ve lost 3,000 armed service people in the three-plus years of the Iraq War. But somehow, the 40,000-plus Americans who di
President (to anxious Applicant for a situation as Brakeman). “Want a berth, eh! – (to Bookkeeper) – Mr Jones, has there been a Brakeman killed on the road within a day or two?”
Mr Jones. “Well, no, Sir, none this week.”
President (to Applicant). “Ah! well, my man, call next Monday, and by that time I guess there’ll be a vacancy.”
From a nineteenth century issue of Harper’s Weekly
Hey Guys,
Let’s put a little perspective on this…
During the time frame mentioned, the average was 1 in every 10 Americans worked for a railroad in some capacity.
Not all of them were T&E employees.
Now, the 230000 figure isn’t broken down by type of fatalities….which means most likely that all deaths, natural and those attributed to accidents and other incidents were all lumped together.
So a yard clerk has a heart attack, there is one “railroad death”.
A car knocker slips and fall from the roof of the repair house, there is another…
So forth and so on.
There was no FRA then, nor any manner of decent or accurate national record keeping on fatalities, in this industry or any other for that matter, so the figure reported may be inflated quite a bit, or it be under stated by a lot, we will never really know which.
And I would imagine there are quite a few deaths never reported, except to or by a local medical examiner or funeral home operator. (Quite often, they were one and the same)
Assume if you will the 1 in 10 ratio, then 2 million, 300 thousand people lost their lives in “work related accidents” nation wide in that time frame.
This would include such occupations as railroading, ind