Monitoring trends in the occurrence of incidents and accidents, and learning real lessons from specific events, are both crucial to the rail industry. All incidents should be reported through the rail industry’s Safety Management Information System (SMIS) database. More serious events and those with more widespread implications are the subject of local and formal investigations, and may also be investigated by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB). Detailed reports about causation factors and recommendations to make improvements are the result of these investigations.
Looking further afield, incident and accident reporting systems and investigation processes are employed in many different industries within and outside the UK. These systems can be extremely diverse and the practices and techniques that have been developed within one industry are rarely shared by those in other areas, some of which may prove to be very useful tools to improving safety.
