mode of freight shipment: in that case railroads have a quarter of the fatality rate per ton mile than waterborne and are 100 times safer than trucking.
Table 3: Fatalities and Fatality Rates Across Freight Modes Fatalities, 2019 40
Ton-miles (billions) 492
Fatalities per billion ton-miles 0.08
Passenger and freight railroads
878
1730
0.50
Trucking
4119
2034
2.02
Waterborne Freight or Industrial Transportation
Sources: Bureau of Transportation Statistics, “U.S. Ton-Miles of Freight,” 2018; “Fatality Facts 2019: Large Trucks,” IIHS, 2021; Bureau of Transportation Statistics, “Transportation Fatalities by Mode,” 2019
Regardless, policies that are directed toward reducing injuries and fatalities will be most useful if targeted to the areas where the problem is the greatest. Therefore, the next few sections examine the details of railroad safety incidents for grade crossings, train accidents not at grade crossings, workforce incidents, and trespassing.
3.2 Grade Crossings Grade crossings are one of the deadliest and most common areas of safety concern for railroads. Fortunately, incidents at grade crossings have decreased by over 60 percent since 1991, shown in Figure 5. But the progress stopped in 2009, and after a few years with about 2,000 annual incidents, numbers appear to be trending upward. Grade crossing incidents are particularly deadly. For every 100 incidents there are about 40 injuries and 12 deaths, a rate that has stayed remarkably consistent for the past three decades.
Safer Railroading
39
