Safety Database Activity Report 2008 - Significant Accidents 2007 - Benchmarking and Appendixes

In 2007 the Safety database collected accidents and critical events from the main railway companies in 21 European countries including Norway and Switzerland, plus EUROTUNNEL. This year NRIC, the Infrastructure Manager from Bulgaria, joined the SDB declaring all the significant accidents which have occurred on its network since 2001. Unfortunately, MAV has interrupted its accident declaration in the end of August 2007 and has been therefore excluded from this report. Finally, data items for years preceding 2007 should expose minor differences from previously published yearly reports because of recalculations with the exclusion of MAV and the inclusion of NRIC. 

The total number of significant accidents reported in 2007 was 2272. 64 passenger and 32 staff fatalities were recorded, out of a total of 2483 victims (seriously injured + killed) for a total of more than 4000 million km of train movements on the network. 

The number of "serious accidents" (as defined by Directive 2004/49/EC) in the data collected is 227. For these accidents Member States shall ensure that an investigation is carried out by the investigating body and make the results of the investigations public (see Appendix: Accident definitions currently in force in Europe).