Concern over growing numbers of rail fatalities

ON AVERAGE, about two people die on the country’s railways per day and six more are injured. These statistics, described by authorities as tragic, are laid bare in the 2016/17 state of safety report released by the Rail Safety Regulator (RSR) yesterday.

“Tragically,” it said, there were 495 fatalities and 2 079 injuries in accidents involving Metrorail and Transnet locomotives over the last year.

“This shows an increase of 5% in fatalities from the previous period, and amounts to almost two deaths a day, while the 10% decrease in injuries still mean that almost six people are injured daily,” said the report.

Nkululeko Poya, RSR chief executive, said fatalities concerned the regulator the most because they seemed difficult to reduce.

They have been hovering between 450 to 490 over the last seven years. The fatalities figure was its highest since 2010/11, a year in which 456 people lost their lives on rail. In 2014/15, 473 people lost their lives on the country’s rail and 453 died during 2015/16.

A total of 4 066 Metrorail and Transnet accidents occurred over the year, a 5% decrease from the 4 250 that happened in 2015/16. At 944, the number of collisions involving Transnet trains show a worrying trend.

Transnet reduced derailments from 718 in 2013/14 to 268 over the past year.

“It remains concerning to note that occurrences involving derailments, collisions, operational train fires and spillages of dangerous goods continue to dominate the Transnet operational occurrences,” said the report.

“These types of occurrences could lead to a delay in trains, thereby negatively affecting reliability and availability of freight services by rail.” Metrorail saw 45 collisions and 28 derailments.

Exactly 460 people died after being struck by the company’s trains, while 189 lost their lives after being hit by Transnet locomotives. The report showed train surfing remained a deadly game, as 140 surfers died. The figure stood at 163 in 2014/15 and 131 last year.

A boy, believed to be 17 years old, plunged to his death in Tembisa three months ago while surfing. Said the report: “The number of level-crossing occurrences, people struck by trains, occurrences in which people travel outside the train (train surfing) and electric shock occurrences increased in the same period.”

Root causes pointed to human factors, Poya said.