Factors affecting efficiency of railways in terms of safety at railway level crossings

Abstract

Road traffic accidents are in the top ten of all deaths, with around 1.4 million fatalities and 50 million injuries per year worldwide. Regarding railways, in the EU, there were 1,666 serious accidents registered in 2018 and 442 of them involved level crossings (LCs). The number of accidents on LCs in the EU in 2018 was approximately 27% of the total number of accidents on railways, but these accidents can be predictable and preventable. The current study investigated the efficiency of railways in terms of accident risk at LCs in 24 countries of the EU. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method has been applied to evaluate the efficiency of the selected railways in terms of safety at LCs. After extensive study of the subject, the comprehensive list of influencing factors has been identified and seven of them have been selected for further analysis. To investigate the relationship between selected factors and efficiency score of railways in terms of accident risk at LCs, the IBM SPSS software package has been deployed. The results show that GDP per capita and density of population in the selected countries have a strong influence on the efficiency of railways in terms of safety at LCs. The expected outcome of this research may contribute to a better understanding of the factors that influence the efficiency score of railways in term of accident risk at LCs and may help to develop preventative measures.