[Improvement of sanitary and epidemiological safety of rail transport--a requirement of the new legislation of the Russian Federation].

Brief analysis of the legal framework in recent years, both in the sphere of technical regulation, and in the field of sanitary and epidemiological welfare of the population is presented in this article. The necessity of inclusion in the technical regulations for the safety of railway rolling stock and elements of railway infrastructure the requirements for sanitary-epidemiological safety and hygiene regulations has been proved. Fragments of technical regulations for railway equipment and infrastructure elements, including the basic requirements for the sanitary-epidemiological security are presented. The position of authors in the processing of the regulatory framework in the field of sanitary-epidemiological welfare of population in standardization documents in accordance with the requirements of federal law "On technical regulation" has been reflected.

[Specific features of hygienic standardization of noise in Metro].

There are various harmful physical factors in the passenger and work premises of the Moscow underground. Noise is the most common harmful factor. The normative documents regulating noise in the underground were found to have discrepancies, which in practice makes it difficult to define whether the level of the sound is in compliance with the existing specifications and hence to determine effective actions made to mitigate its negative impact on the underground passengers and personnel.

Review of walking hazards for railroad workers.

This is a review of walking tasks in the railroad environment, and the injuries that result from slips, trips, falls, or other acute or even non-traumatic exposures. The lack of federal regulations for railroad walkways has led several states to develop and enforce their own regulations. Support from the research literature for such regulations has come from biomechanical studies of the effects of walking on railroad ballast, which will be reviewed.

Effect of three countermeasures against the illegal crossing of railway tracks.

This study was designed to investigate the effects of three countermeasures--landscaping, building a fence and prohibitive signs--on the frequency of trespassing, which in this case means crossing the track at places where it is forbidden. At each location the official route was no more than 300 m away. The main results showed that the effect of each countermeasure on the frequency of trespassing was statistically significant. Specifically, the fencing reduced trespassing by 94.6%, followed by landscaping (91.3%) and prohibitive signs (30.7%). The majority of illegal crossings were committed alone and the persons trespassing were mostly adults and men. In addition, the results demonstrated some tendencies of how the effects of the selected countermeasures can vary with the characteristics of the trespassers. The main implication of this study is that the building of physical barriers such as landscaping or fencing is recommended for reducing trespassing. However, if the required resources are not available or the site is not suitable for such measures, the use of prohibitive signs is recommended. Further, there is a need to tailor the countermeasures to the characteristics of the trespassers in order to ensure that the most appropriate countermeasures are applied.

[Emergency response management near the tracks of the public railway network: special aspects of missions connected with the German national railway system]. / Notfallmanagement im Schienenbereich des öffentlichen Verkehrsnetzes : Besonderheiten bei Einsätzen im Zusammenhang mit der Deutschen Bahn.

Emergency response management and rescue operations concerning the railway network in Germany need special attention and implementation in several ways. The emergency response concerning the German national railway network managed by Deutsche Bahn AG is subject to various rules and regulations which have to be followed precisely. Only by following these rules and procedures is the safety of all emergency staff at the scene ensured. The German national railway network (Deutsche Bahn AG) provides its own emergency response control center, which specializes in managing its response to emergencies and dispatches an emergency response manager to the scene. This person serves as the primary Deutsche Bahn AG representative at the scene and is the only person who is allowed to earth the railway electrical power lines. This article will discuss different emergency situations concerning railway accidents and the emergency medical response to them based on a near collision with a high speed train during a rescue mission close to the railway track. Injury to personnel could only be avoided by chance and luck. The dangers and risks for rescue staff are specified. Furthermore, the article details practical guidelines for rescue operations around the German national railway track system.

Colonial modernity and networks in the Japanese empire: the role of Goto Shinpei.

This paper examines how Goto Shinpei (1857-1929) sought to develop imperial networks emanating out of Tokyo in the fields of public health, railways, and communications. These areas helped define colonial modernity in the Japanese empire. In public health, Goto's friendship with the bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburo led to the establishment of an Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo. Key scientists from the institute took up positions in colonial medical colleges, creating a public health network that serviced the empire. Much of the empire itself was linked by a network of railways. Goto was the first president of the South Manchuria Railway company (SMR). Communication technologies, especially radio, helped to bring the empire closer. By 1925, the Tokyo Broadcasting Station had begun its public radio broadcasts. Broadcasting soon came under the umbrella of the new organization, the Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK). Goto was NHK's first president. The empire would soon be linked by radio, and it was by radio that Emperor Hirohito announced to the nation in 1945 that the empire had been lost.

Rail safety and rail privatisation in Britain.

British Rail (BR), the former unified main line railway operator in Great Britain, was divided into about 100 separate organisations and privatised from April 1994. There was concern in the run-up to privatisation that the fragmentation of the system and the entry of new operators might compromise safety. This paper investigates what has happened to safety by analysing data on almost all fatal railway accidents, together with the most important non-fatal train accidents, from 1967 to 2003, with additional brief analyses back to 1946. BR had achieved downward trends in the mean numbers of accidents per train-kilometre for all the main classes of accident in the 27 years up to 1993, and the paper takes the extrapolation of these favourable trends as the yardstick by which to judge the safety performance of the privatised railway. The paper finds that the privatised railway had fewer accidents than this yardstick for all classes of accident. Only one indicator is adverse: the number of fatalities in train collisions and derailments is higher than expected, because of the severity of the accident at Ladbroke Grove in 1999. The principal conclusion is that there is no evidence that privatisation caused railway safety to deteriorate.

Death due to railway-related suicidal decapitation: a case report.

In Italy, railway-related deaths give rise to extensive inquiries because it is mandatory for the public prosecutor to investigate the circumstances of death. For the railway embankment, normal traffic rules are not valid and the guilt of the engine driver usually cannot be proven. Consequently, these cases are very often declared as suicides without adequate evidence. Furthermore, there is a potential risk of confusion with homicide, body dismemberment or mutilation. Our medico-legal institutes are increasingly engaged with expert opinions on questions of accident, suicide or homicide because they lead to complications in the fields of insurance, criminal and civil law.

Corporate manslaughter.

The Government published its long-awaited draft Bill on the creation of a new criminal offence of corporate manslaughter shortly before the May 2005 general election. The Bill was included in the Queen's Speech after the general election and, with a Labour government back in power, the new offence could be on to the statute book as early as 2006. The Home Affairs Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee announced ajoint inquiry to consider and report on the Bill. This is expected to be completed by the end of 2005. Pressure for reform of the law relating to manslaughter and corporate killing arose out of a series of high profile fatal accidents, including several rail crashes. There has been said to be an increasing concern amongst the public that companies and organisations are not being held sufficiently accountable for deaths caused by their criminal negligence. The author acted in the first of the major cases, representing the directors accused of manslaughter following the Herald of Free Enterprise capsize disaster in 1987.

"Cattle car complexes": a correspondence with historical captivity and post-Holocaust witnesses.

This article explores critical complexes relating to the construction of historical captivity in deportation train journeys by examining fictional and testimonial accounts of that experience. Using Thane Rosenbaum's short story "Cattle Car Complex," the author shows that fiction is a prism through which to view victims' experiences of deportation-experiences that tend to be overlooked in interpretive literature about the Holocaust. Historians have examined deportations above all as a perpetrator narrative, utilizing contemporaneous documents and sources. Their treatment neglects the numerous testimonies about the debilitating effects of deportation travel, as well as the evocation of that traumatic transit in post-Holocaust texts and contexts such as fiction, film, art, and museological and commemorative practice. The author argues that sensory witness is a compelling paradigm that can reveal the silences and elisions in representations of historical captivity.

Control of alcohol and drug use: changes to conform to new DOT transportation workplace testing procedures. Final rule.

FRA is publishing a final rule conforming its drug and alcohol testing regulation to the December 19, 2000 revision of DOT's transportation workplace testing procedures. Consistency between the FRA's rule and DOT's revision is important in order to avoid overlap, conflict, duplication, or confusion among DOT drug and alcohol testing regulations.