Railway Safety

Overview of Freight Train Derailments in the EU Causes, Impacts, Prevention 

The FP7 project D-RAIL, which aims to make significant improvements in the detection and prevention of freight train derailments, and the mitigation of their subsequent effects has started with a review and analysis of recent freight train derailments to evaluate root causes and the severity of impact. 

Chapter written by Cristian Ulianov, Fran9ois Defossez, Gordana Vasic Franklin and Mark Robinson. 

Traffic Safety, First Edition. Edited by Greorge Yannis and Simon Cohen. ISTE Ltd 2016. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley Sons, Inc. 

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Wolff, J. (2002) Railway safety and the ethics of tolerability of risk , study commissioned by the Rail Safety and Standards Board, www.rssb.co.uk, accessed October 2006... 

We chose Level 2 as the reference level during our analysis that means that by safe we understand that the system is compliant with the railway safety regulations. And we chose Level 6 as the lowest component level (we did not consider further decomposition levels). Our goal was to analyse how possible failure modes of the components can affect the safety properties expressed with respect to Level 2. 

The object and collaboration diagrams are input to the OF-FMEA method. From this input we develop formal specification of component interactions. For this purpose we use CSP. Each component of the collaboration diagram becomes a CSP process with input and output channels as shown in the diagram. In addition to this we develop formal models of safety requirements of the system. The requirements are derived from the railway safety regulations. Each requirement is modeled as a CSP process and imposes some restrictions on the ordering of events in the system. The requirements refer to the events that are visible on Level 4 of our decomposition. 

Advanced Railway Safety Case Production Tool of Railway Research Centre (http //www.railway.bham.ac.uk/advanced.htm)—the research addressed the requirements for a Safety Case Automated Production Tool (SCAPT) environment integrating systems engineering processes and tools, modeling, risk management and domain knowledge. 

With the introduction of the CENELEC railway standards and the ERTMS/ETCS system, a probabilistic approach was taken to safety analyses within the field of railway safety. This brings the approach for safety analyses within railway technology in line with other technology areas such as aviation and nuclear power generation. 

One of the obstacles for the opening of the railway market is the absence of a common approach for demonstrating the safety levels of the railway systems. Without this common approach, the different national railway safety authorities will have to perform then-own assessments in order to accept a system, or parts of it, even if they have been developed and proven safe in other EU member states. 

The Council of the European Union, 2004, Directive 2004/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on safety on the Community s railways and amending Council Directive 95/18/EiC on the licensing of railway undertakings and Directive 2001/14/EC on the allocation of railway infrastructure capacity and the levying of charges for the use of railway infrastructure and safety certification (Railway Safety Directive) . 

This new function implemented in railway safety-related systems has to be evaluated in terms of the RAMS attributes, as required by railway standards (EN50126 2000). However, no current dependability methods are able to quantify the signal propagation errors that essentially stem from environment effects and that affect the user position estimation. 

HSE (2002). Developing and maintaining staff competence. Railway Safety Principles and Guidance, Part 3, Section A, HMRI, HSE. 

Railway Safety and State Intervention in the Nineteenth Century... 

Source Annual Reporrs (Railway Safety 1991/2 (HSC, 1992) Railway Safety 1994/5 (HSE, 1995a). 

These requirements have since been replaced by Railway Safety Principles and Guidance, published by HSE. This coincided with the transfer in 1997 of the approval of new works from the Secretary of State for Transport to HSE. 

This was the initial estimate. The Railway Safety Annual Report 1995/96, however, estimated that at this stage they were dealing with some 107 separate units. 

New r ularions have also been made under the HSW Act, namely the Railways (Safety Case) Reguladons, 1994 (see below), the Railways (Safety Critical Work) Regulations, 1994, and the Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Rail Reguladons, 1996. 

The new arrangements for health and safety which accompanied privatization were referred to by those in the industry as a safety cascade . This describes a system which greatly extends previous notions of self-regulation, by making the infrastructure controllers responsible for overseeing the safety of the operational network under the supervision of HSE . These controllers thus have responsibihties for their own activities under the HSW Act and for the entire operational network under the 1993 Railways Act. The key to this system is the Railway Safety Case (RSC). 

Issues of regulatory capacity and accountability have significance beyond this particular case study as they are both central to successful self-regulatory regimes. Accordingly difficulties in these areas are symptomatic of much deeper problems, so let us turn our attention to these and what the future prospects for railway safety seem to be. 

HSE (1995a) Railway Safety HM Chief Inspecting Officer of Railways Annual Report on the Safety Record of the Railways in Great Britain during 1994/95, London HMSO. 

Railway Safety HM Chief Inspecting Officer of Railways Annual Report... 

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