DEATH ON THE RAILWAYS
ONE TRESPASSER KILLED EVERY NINE DAYS, FIGURES REVEAL
MORE than 600 people have been killed trespassing on railway tracks in England and Wales in the last 16 years.
The shocking figures, released by the Department for Transport, work out as the equivalent of one death every nine days.
The fatalities were all caused either by electrocution by live tracks, or after the victim was struck by a train. None were treated as suicide cases, which are counted separately. In 2016/17, the data shows, 27 trespassers were killed. That is actually a fall compared to 2015/16, when the figure stood at 32. It is also much lower than the highest number on recent record - 2000/01, when 53 trespassers were killed.
However, while the number of deaths may have fallen, the number of trespassers putting their lives in jeopardy has not.
The British Transport Police received 8,265 reports of people trespassing on railways tracks in 2016 alone, equivalent to one trespasser every hour and up from 6,655 in 2012.
Some 555 of those trespassers were children.
While 78 per cent of deaths on Britain’s railways involve trespassers, there have also been 141 people killed while using level crossings since 2000/01.
There were six instances of this in 2016/17.
There have also been 164 occasions when trains collided with road vehicles at level crossings, including five in the year 2016/17, though there were no fatalities.
Passenger trains have also crashed with road vehicles in 31 other locations in the past 16 years.
Some 77 passenger trains have derailed and a further 54 collided with other trains.
In 2016/17 there were three collisions with other trains and three crashes with road vehicles at locations other than level crossings. Allan Spence, head of public and passenger safety at Network Rail, said: “Britain has the safest railway in Europe but still too many people lose their lives on the tracks. “The dangers may not always be obvious but the electricity on the railway is always on and trains can travel up to 125 miles per hour, so even if they see you, they can’t stop in time.”