Investigation of factors influencing the efficiency of railways in terms of safety at level crossings

Abstract

Road traffic accidents are in the top ten of all deaths worldwide. Regarding railways, in the EU there is one person killed or seriously injured every day in serious accidents involving level crossings (LCs). The number of accidents is almost unchanged in the last ten years despite the huge efforts that railways have made. There is a need to look at the factors that contributed to the occurrence of accidents at LCs beyond the drivers and pedestrian behavior or technical issues. The reported research investigates the efficiency of railways in terms of accident risk at LCs in 24 countries of the EU. It evaluates the efficiency of railways by applying the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method and identifying the factors that influence the efficiency score of railways in terms of accident risk using the IBM SPSS. The results show that GDP per capita and density of population in the selected countries have a strong influence on the efficiency of railways. The expected outcome of this research may contribute to better understanding of the factors that influence the efficiency score of railways in term of accident risk at LCs and develop preventative measures.