Saftey Efforts Continue
to Pay Off for Rail Industry
A field welding crew, with trackmen (L to R) Glenn Sanborn and Richard Principato in Waterville, ME, can present a laundry list of safety considerations. The crew must ensure that they are protected against any rail traffic, whether it is a locomotive or other repair equipment. They must be sure they are utilizing the required personal protective equipment (i.e. hardhats, eye protection, gloves...) A job such as this one even presents the topic of fire prevention. The list goes on and changes with each individual work site. By far the easiest method for maintaining a safe work site is for the employees to communicate and discuss safety before, during and after the job.
From the moment a person first becomes employed on the railroad, he or she is told that to do a job right is to do it safely. Railroads maintain extensive ongoing training programs that teach employees the safe way to do their jobs. That training is continually re-emphasized through safety committees and meetings and, where appropriate, additional training.
The phrase "Safety First" has a railroad origin. R.C. Richards of the Chicago & North Western Railway coined that phrase in 1910 and gave birth to a "Safety First" movement that eventually became an international railroad movement, with chapters in Europe and Asia as well as North America.
The fact that railroads have invested approximately $90 billion to maintain and improve their tracks and equipment just since 1990 shows that "Safety First" are not empty words. Consider the following facts:
According to the federal government, railroads were safer than ever before in their history during 1996 -- bettering previous records set in 1994 and 1995 -- in spite of the fact that rail freight traffic was at an all-time high.
The biggest rail safety problems come from trespassers and negligent motorists, who are responsible for over 90 percent of all rail-related fatalities.
The Safe Way To Move Freight
More inter-city ton-miles of freight move by rail in the U.S. than by any other mode of transportation -- 41 percent versus 27 percent by truck, according to 1995 statistics. Yet nearly four times as many people die as a result of truck-related accidents than those involving railroads.
An Even Safer Future
Technology has always played in important role in railroad safety. For more than three decades, railroads have had track side detectors to report on overheated axles and other equipment defects. These detectors alert train crews to problems before they cause an accident.
Head shields, shelf couplers, thermal protection and pressure relief devices have helped reduce the number of hazardous material releases in train accidents by more than 70 percent since 1980, even as hazardous materials traffic has more than doubled.
Rail-funded research in the 1980s resulted in development of curved plate wheels that are more durable than the straight plate wheels they replaced and have helped reduce the rate of wheel-related derailments by 77 percent since 1980.
Centralized dispatching and train control minimizes the potential for congestion-caused accidents. To monitor, control, and centralize its traffic control operations more efficiently, Guilford Rail System's Signal Department uses a computer-based operating system & PC based hardware, Track Driver Professional. TD Pro is a state-of-the-art, Windows NT-based Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) system, that implements traffic control functions in a single client/server platform.
Information Provided by the Association of American Railroads
According to the most recent available figures (1995) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the lost workday injury and occupational illness rates per 100 full time employees for rail were 35 percent lower than for intercity bus, 58 percent lower than for transit (bus, subway, etc.), 61 percent lower than for trucking and 64 percent lower than for airlines.