Rail transport fatalities drop by 11% in 2024

In 2024, the number of people killed in railway accidents in the EU fell to 750, a 10.8% decrease compared with 2023 (841 deaths).

The declining number of rail transport fatalities in 2024 came after 2 consecutive years of increases. A decreasing trend was seen from 2014 to 2019, when the number fell by around 22%, and another sharp decrease of almost 15% compared with 2019 had been recorded by the end of 2021. In the years 2020 and 2021, the decreases in railway accidents, fatalities and seriously injured people coincided with a sharp drop in rail passenger transport caused by the global pandemic.

Almost two thirds of the 2024 fatalities involved unauthorised persons on the tracks (65.6%). The second largest group concerned level-crossing users (25.5%), followed by railway employees (3.7%), the category 'others' (3.1%) and railway passengers (2.1%).

This information comes from data on railway safety published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.

Source dataset: tran_sf_railvi

Suicides cost more lives than accidents

In 2024, the highest number of people killed in railway accidents was recorded in Poland (163 fatalities), followed by Germany (142) and Romania (65). On the other end, the lowest numbers were observed in Luxembourg and Slovenia (where in fact there were no fatalities in 2024), Estonia and Ireland (both 1), and Finland and Latvia (both 4).

Source datasets: tran_sf_railvi

Suicides occurring on railway premises are reported separately from fatalities or injuries. The number of suicides on railways is constantly much higher than the number of fatalities despite the downward trend seen in the EU the past decade (2 357 in 2024 compared with 2 608 in 2014, -9.6%). The highest numbers of suicides in 2024 were recorded in Germany (688), France (267) and the Netherlands (186), while the lowest ones were registered in Lithuania (no suicides), Greece (1) and Estonia (4).