Track Worker Safety - RSSB Graphic Insights
Improvements in track worker safety
Significant improvements have been made to the safety of railway workers over the past 100 years. In 1920 alone, 420 railway workers died on the railway—many of these were track workers inspecting, maintaining, or building railway infrastructure.
More recently, over the past decade, there have been two workforce fatalities per year on average. That is 20 people who could still be alive today. There is clearly more we can do to improve safety for railway workers.
Fatalities over time
Click on, and hover over the interactive graph to reveal fatalities over time.
Types of Hazards
Track workers are exposed to construction-type hazards such as working with heavy equipment and working at height. They are also exposed to railway-specific hazards such as proximity to fast moving trains and high-voltage electricity.
A network-wide view of the hazardous events track workers are exposed to is provided by the Safety Risk Model. The model supports risk assessments, can be used to compare risks across organisations, and shows how these contribute to risk across the network.
Hazard risk levels
Click on the risk areas in this interactive chart to reveal the relative risk levels.
Each bubble represents 0.02 Fatalities and Weighted Injuries (FWI) per year, with a total of 10.56 FWI shown here. This has been derived from the Safety Risk Model.
The FWI is a means to report and monitor safety performance. It is a composite measure of risk or harm that combines fatalities with physical injuries and cases of shock or trauma, which are weighted according to their relative severity.
Object/ Debris
and Falls
Accident
by Train
Being struck by a train carries the fatality risk of 0.7 statistical fatalities per year, the
highest fatality risk across all hazards for track workers.
Trains have much greater stopping distances in comparison to road vehicles and therefore cannot be
relied upon to stop during dangerous situations. The most effective means to minimise this risk is to
avoid running lines altogether.
Increasing mechanisation like tampers and continuous welded rails reduces the number of track workers
required at a particular site. There will always however remain a need
for workers to access the running lines, and this requires other methods to keep trains and track
workers separated.
When in motion, it can often be difficult for a train to stop immediately in response to a dangerous situation ahead. This is because the speed of trains and their heavy weight means they have longer breaking distances.
With the increase in mechanisation we have seen a decrease in the number of track workers required at a particular site. Although this is positive in terms of reducing this safety risk, the need for workers to access the running lines will always remain, and so methods to keep trains and track workers separated will be required.
Reducing dependency on lookouts
Lookouts have historically alerted track workers to approaching trains. They are positioned next to the work site to deliver an early warning so that workers can move out of the way. Where visibility is poor, additional lookouts are positioned further along the track to relay the warning of approaching trains using flags. This method of working is called unassisted lookout working.
However, as lookouts are prone to error this is no longer the preferred way of doing things. Any distraction or misunderstanding of the track layout could result in a train moving towards workers who are still on the running line. It is estimated that the probability of human error—for even the most familiar tasks, such as warning of an approaching train—leads to such events occurring at a rate of 1 in 50,000.
Approximately 20,000 trains are moving across the network each day, and thousands of hours of work is being done at the same time. These contribute to high levels of risk from unassisted lookout working. When track workers move out of the way of a train at the last few seconds, this type of incident is classified as a near miss.
How lookouts operate
Click on the graphic to see a lookout in operation and uncover insights.
How are near misses trending over the past two decades ?
Since our inception in 2003 we have delivered several key initiatives to understand and mitigate the risk of track workers being struck by trains. In this time there has been a significant reduction in the number of near misses.
Hover over the lines to investigate key RSSB and rail industry initiatives and Click through to access more material.
Prior to 2018/19 it had been almost five years since a track worker was struck and killed by a moving
train - however fatal accidents at Stoats Nest, Margam, Roade and Surbiton re-focus the rail industry on
track worker safety. In 2019 the ORR served two improvement notices to Network Rail covering the
safety of employees and contractors working on or near the line,
RSSB supported Network Rail in addressing these. The resultant Safety Task Force reduced the volume
of unassisted lookout working by 95% with a shift towards line blockages and possessions, as well as
a 30% increase in the line blockages with additional protection such as a track circuit operating device.
This has driven a 50% reduction in the number of track worker near misses with trains, from an
average of 60 near misses per year to less than 30.
RSSB are working at the
forefront of how technology can provide further opportunities to improve track worker safety. We are
developing a predictive tool to mitigate the risk of runaway assets from work sites, and are also
supporting the rail industry in exploring how geofencing could improve safety at work sites by
keeping staff within safe areas.
