ements to be fulfilled by the railway undertakings and infrastructure managers' safety management system (SMS). This system must provide for all the procedures and processes required to ensure the safe operation and maintenance of the railway. The application of the safety management system should ensure that the risk linked with the operation and maintenance of a railway system is adequately controlled.
Safety at the level of vehicles
The SMS of railway undertakings must also include processes for the control of contractors and the supply of maintenance and material. This is important for railway undertakings, particularly those which operate freight wagons (including those which transport dangerous goods), when they do not themselves carry out maintenance. In such cases their SMS should state how their processes manage the verification and control of a contractor (i.e. keeper) who performs maintenance on their behalf. This includes defining responsibilities clearly and ensuring traceability of documents among the parties involved.
The Railway Safety Directive was amended in 2008 (Directive 2008/110/EC), and the responsibility for maintenance is now assigned to a new player, the entity in charge of maintenance (ECM), which needs to be certified. Indeed, since the railway undertaking is responsible for safe operation, it has to get an assurance that vehicles are maintained and safe to operate. The certification of ECMs is intended to provide this assurance.
Safety at the level of goods transported
In the EU, inland freight transport, which is shared between road (76%), rail (18%) and waterways (6%), amounts to 2500 billion tons/kilometre per year. On average, distances covered by rail transport operations are longer than in road transport. In 2007, transport of dangerous goods accounted for 5.8 % of all inland freight transport. Due to the organisation of railway transport more than 60% of freight trains include at least one wagon carrying dangerous goods.
According to the European Rail Agency’s historical database, from 1990 to 2005, 38 railway accidents involving dangerous goods caused 27 fatalities and 75 injuries. These 27 fatalities have been caused by level crossing accidents (62%) with dangerous goods coming from the crossing trucks, collisions (19%) and derailments (19%). With 28 fatalities, the Viareggio accident is the most severe railway accident to occur over the last two decades. This kind of severe accident has a very low probability of occurring. The chance of this happening has been estimated to be around one over several hundred years.
Supervision and investigation
The Rail Safety Directive sets out requirements for the establishment of independent National Safety Authorities. Their role includes awarding safety certificates to railway undertakings and safety authorisations to infrastructure managers, and ensuring supervision of railway undertakings and infrastructure managers' safety management systems. This supervision should include checking that the conditions and requirements laid down in the safety certificate/authorisations continue to be met. However, the risks arising from railway operations remain the shared responsibility of the railway undertakings and infrastructure managers.
The Directive also requires Member States to investigate certain serious accidents and incidents (defined as those with at least one fatality, five serious injuries or with a monetary cost estimated of at least 2,000,000 euros). This is the task of the National Investigation Bodies which are required to carry out independent investigation and to consider the lessons to be learned from accidents without apportioning blame and to make recommendations for the National Safety Authorities to consider safety improvements where appropriate.
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