Collecting evidence from distributed sources to evaluate railway suicide and trespass prevention measures.

It can be difficult to select from available safety preventative measures, especially where there is limited evidence of effectiveness in different contexts. This paper describes application of a method to identify and evaluate wide-ranging preventative measures for rail suicide and trespass fatalities. Evidence from literature and industry sources was collated and reviewed in a two stage process to achieve consensus among experts on the likely effects of the measures and factors influencing their implementation. Multiple evaluation criteria were used to examine the measures from different perspectives. Fencing, awareness campaigns and different types of organisational initiatives were recommended for further testing. This is the first time evidence has been collected internationally across such a range of preventative measures. Commentary is provided on using this type of approach to select safety measures from a pool of prevention options, including how re-framing the scope of the exercise could identify alternative options for prevention. Practitioner summary: The findings give insight to how different measures work in different ways and how industry can consider this in strategic initiatives. The method could be used in future studies with different frames of reference (e.g. different timescales, level of ambition and safety context e.g. railway crossings or highway fatalities). Abbreviation: RESTRAIL: REduction of Suicides and Trespasses on RAILway property.

Toward an Application Guide for Safety Integrity Level Allocation in Railway Systems.

The work in the article presents the development of an application guide based on feedback and comments stemming from various railway actors on their practices of SIL allocation to railway safety-related functions. The initial generic methodology for SIL allocation has been updated to be applied to railway rolling stock safety-related functions in order to solve the SIL concept application issues. Various actors dealing with railway SIL allocation problems are the intended target of the methodology; its principles will be summarized in this article with a focus on modifications and precisions made in order to establish a practical guide for railway safety authorities. The methodology is based on the flowchart formalism used in CSM (common safety method) European regulation. It starts with the use of quantitative safety requirements, particularly tolerable hazard rates (THR). THR apportioning rules are applied. On the one hand, the rules are related to classical logical combinations of safety-related functions preventing hazard occurrence. On the other hand, to take into account technical conditions (last safety weak link, functional dependencies, technological complexity, etc.), specific rules implicitly used in existing practices are defined for readjusting some THR values. SIL allocation process based on apportioned and validated THR values is finally illustrated through the example of "emergency brake" subsystems. Some specific SIL allocation rules are also defined and illustrated.

A new insight on the risky behavior of motorists at railway level crossings: An observational field study.

Accidents at railway level crossings (LXs) give rise to serious material and human damage. Particularly, collisions between trains and motorized vehicles are the most critical accidents occurring at LXs. It is worth noticing that violations committed by vehicle drivers are the primary cause of such accidents. The present study is a tentative to acquire a better understanding of risky behavior of vehicle drivers while crossing LXs during the closure cycle. Namely, risk analysis based on field measurement conducted at four automated LXs with two half barriers is performed. We focus on vehicle driver behavior during the LX closure cycle while distinguishing between different phases. In fact, the closure cycle is divided into three phases which are "Ph2 Red Flash and Siren", "Ph3 Barriers Coming Down" and "Ph4 Barriers Down"; and vehicle driver behavior in each phase as time increases is scrutinized respectively. Particularly, zigzag scenarios are detected, using an original experimental setting that we have implemented, and analyzed in detail. The main findings based on the analysis demonstrate that the peak of violation rate in the morning is later than the actual rush hour in the morning; a distinct peak of the violation rate shows on Friday, while the violation rate on weekend is fairly low; the relative violation rate of vehicles with high speed decreases continuously as time advances from Ph2 to Ph3 in the daytime; the violation rate during Ph4 decreases as Ph4 duration is prolonged, which contradicts a general speculation that a higher rate of zigzag violations would appear as the duration of Ph4 is extended. These findings open the way towards determining the impacting factors which have an important contribution to the vehicle driver decision-making in this context (e.g., traffic density, time schedule and phase duration). In addition, the outputs of the present study are conducive to identifying potential interventions to improve safety at LXs.