File talk:Road-way vs. railway safety.png

Very much doubt the seriousness and correctness of these figures

These figures are at least very questionable, if not totally wrong and misinterpreted.

Just as an example: Switzerland

Accoding the Swiss Federal Office for Statistics, between 2002 and 2011 there were 1 fatality per 6249 million person-kilometer on railways (in 100 Million pkm: 0.016 - and not something around 0.28).

However, 1 fatality per every 443 million person-kilometer by private cars (in 100 Million pkm: 0.23 - and not something around 0.38).

This means that the relation between "road-way" and "railway" is a factor of 14, and not only a bit smaller than 3! Check out by yourself here under the title "Risikovergleich ausgewählter Verkehrmittel" (in English: risk analysis between different transport means): comparison between railway, cars, bicycles and motor bikes (in German and French only).

By the way: Of the about average 20 fatalities in railway transport are less than 1 passenger per year!

But see also:

• Transport accidents
• Passenger transport performance
• Eisenbahnunfälle und verunfallte Personen (in German, railway accidents and people involved)

So far about Switzerland.

But I also very much doubt that the situation in Austria or Germany are fundamentally different (for railways as well as on roads)!!!!

- ZH8000 (talk) 03:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion took previously place here: Talk:Rail_transport#Safety_of_rail_transport

ZH8000 (talk) 20:45, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

First of all: did you read this: File_talk:Road-way_vs._railway_safety.png#Very much doubt the seriousness and correctness of these figures

Secondly: Did you understand it? And if yes, what are your conclusions? - I miss your responses to that! - You claim that you did study (did you complete and succeed?), even in engineering, so you should definitely be able to respond accordingly.

Thirdly: Your error are manyfold - much too manyfold in my perception. But well, let me point to only a few of the most fundamental ones:

• First of all, you do not cite anywhere on what years your data are based on, neither in the picture (absolutely necessary), nor on the WP Commons page, actually nowhere. Until now.
• Secondly, as you show now in your remark above that you base your euphemistically called "statistics" are based only on one SINGLE year (2010). For heaven's sake! Pardon-me, but this is less than serious, and far below what I would expect from an academic, even when he was just a bad one! This is just simply a shameful failure and much worse than a rookie mistake.
• Thirdly: There are many errors in your data. For example, the number of fatalities on Swiss railways in 2010 was not 53, as you claim in your data, but 18 (see again here).
• Fourthly: You are are misinterpreting the data (because you do not ask what they are representing and how they are sampled, eventually?!). For example, only one of the 18 fatalities in rail transport in Switzerland in 2010 was a passenger (see again previous link)! Other fatalities may have resulted from suicides on rail tracks, accidents between trains and cars on crosses (eventually with fatalities among the car drivers), workers on trail tracks etc. And according to the common understanding of the industry, some of these fatalities are not taken into account regarding transport means saftey! E.g. in Austria 2010, there were reported 122 fatalities related to rail transport, but of which 92 were suicides, 1 railway worker, among others, but not a single passenger (see here). But you claim, there were 86 fatalities! *strange*
• And finally (but definitely not last): Please, do keep up with common sense! Always re-consider your own data, especially if you use them as THE basis of fundamental conclusions such as transport safety! - Do you honestly and seriously think that railways in Spain are 700% safer than the ones in Sweden, for example, or even 1260% safer than the Austrian ones?! Really? - Well, if yes, I hope I never ever have to drive on public transport systems where you where involved in planning it!

So please, either start producing serious stuff (real statistics!), or then please just give up publicizing them here on WP. Thanks pal!

ZH8000 (talk) 19:51, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your analysis and comments. I'll remake the data and the graph:

• 1 and 2 - I'll consider 10 years, and I'll find the average, either for the fatalities, either for the km-passengers
• 3 - you're right, I considered killed and injured, then 53
• that I must disagree, because I'd like to compare the safety of the two modes. In car fatalities statistics, normally pedestrian hits (whatever the cause) are included. Do you agree with me on this?
• 4 - I was in Moscow, and there the subway for example has gates between the platform and the rails (like the lifts), to avoid people falling on the rail whatever the cause. If in Sweden or Austria, the rail system allows such things, I might say the mode on this particularity is not safe enough. The safety of the mode, is not only the safety of the mean of transport within it, is the overall safety of the infrastructures.

Thank you for your comments. I'll remake the graph and update the file.

Kindly do not delete it.

Regards. João Pimentel Ferreira 09:27, 9 May 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

Good day, according to Eurostat, CH in the period 2008-2012 had an average of 21.2 fatalities per year in the rail system (total killed by any reason; not included injured). According the Eurostat, in the period 2008-2012 in CH there were an average of 18771.2 million pax-km per year. This gives 0.11. Kindly confirm that this data is made according to scientific criteria, so I can update the figure. I really didn't want to creat a war edition, I'm in wikipedia as you to give truthful and reliable information to the public, so kindly help me with this data :) João Pimentel Ferreira 11:36, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Good day. I updated the figure. Kindly check it and the respective data sheet, as well all the notes. Thank you. Best regards João Pimentel Ferreira 18:02, 10 May 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

General Remarks

Well, my dear João, unfortunately I still very much doubt how meaningful your diagram is regarding the discussion about transport safety. I would thoroughly advice you to dive first of all into industries' kind of talk about this issue in order to learn more about the subject. Start for example here: 'ERA's safety performance nowledge

Just four general remarks from my side (I hesitate to comment your diagram further in detail):

• Safety is not just a single figure, but a complex structure of causes and deversified outcomes.
• For the sake of comparability you can (dramatically) reduce Safety to one single figure, such as "fatalities per x". But if you really want to do this, firstly, you have to make clear to the reader's awareness that you have been applying an operationalisation which is eventually not free of fundamental suspicion regarding its applicability! Secondly, fatalities and significant injuries per passenger-km, or like the European Railway Agency ERA puts it, per occupants-km (see page IV in [1]) would eventually be the better selection, don't you think so?
• According to the ERA and European Commission, the factor between fatality risk of passenger using different mode of transport of a car passenger and a railway passenger is greater than 28 times! Far more than your conclusion and probably much more significant, for us as users of particular transportation modes.
• Don't reinvent the wheel! ... Because almost for sure it will be worse than done by professionals! ;-)

Regards, -- ZH8000 (talk) 01:41, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your relevant comments and analysis.

1 - I'll put on the figure to the user awareness that the graph does not refer to safety but as it is; fatalities (killed by any reason) per pax-km; i.e.; I'll not mention the word safety for the sake of scientific truthfulness

2 - As I said, I didn't analyse injured, but just killed; then, the overall concept of safety will not be fulfilled; so I'll not refer such word. I will make it clear what is the operationalization method which I'm trying to achieve.

3 - The report, made by ERA, which refers to fatality risk (Fatalities per billion passenger kilometers) gives 0.0156 per 100 million pax-km for railway and 0.44 per 100 million pax-km for car occupant. I provide all the data from Eurostat. Kindly see the tables and the respective links for each table. I really think the differences as I previously mentioned, came from the fact that I define simply fatalities (I suppose that is objectiveness), including everyone and every case, while I realize that you and the numbers from ERA just consider passengers/occupants.

4 - I don't want to reinvent the wheel, I just would like it to put it in WP, but it's getting hard after so much work.

Regards. João Pimentel Ferreira 10:25, 11 May 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

João, your third edition looks almost cool to me. I would add that these figures are based on data by the EU-27 member states as an average of the years of 2008-2010. Further, you are referring to the PDF page 7, but it is the document's labeled page 1. I also find the figure 6 on page 7 quite interesting. Perhaps you will sometimes find time to prepare it for WP while also including Switzerland? ;-)

And please, do not forget to regularly sign your comments! -- ZH8000 (talk) 12:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the remarks. I'll change the image as you say. João Pimentel Ferreira 10:01, 15 May 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

Data for rail transport

	Annual number of victims in rail transport (killed by any reason; injured not included)										Total annual passengerrail transport (in million pax-km)										Killed per 100 million pax-km
GEO	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	Average	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	Average	Average 2004-2012
European Union (28 countries)	:	:	1478	1559	1509	1478	1314	1265	1174	1396,71	:	:	379952	397038	:	:	:	:	:	388495,00	0,36
European Union (27 countries)	:	:	1442	1532	1496	1428	1287	1239	1160	1369,14	:	:	378630	395465	:	:	:	:	:	387047,50	0,35
European Union (25 countries)	1487	1431	1244	1319	1244	1250	1132	1072	1013	1243,56	349417	354981	368127	385585	:	:	:	:	:	364527,50	0,34
European Union (15 countries)	780	700	683	724	634	623	580	529	523	641,78	320487	326118	338517	346012	:	:	:	:	:	332783,50	0,19
Belgium	19	24	20	37	15	26	35	28	18	24,67	9225	8510	8964	9403	10139	10237	:	10669	:	9592,43	0,26
Bulgaria	:	:	68	27	44	28	16	67	21	38,71		:	2411	2404	2317	2138	2090	2059	1870	2184,14	1,77
Czech Republic	232	251	52	25	44	26	48	29	26	81,44	6580	6667	6922	6898	6773	6472	6559	6669	7196	6748,44	1,21
Denmark	21	16	18	8	12	15	10	6	11	13,00	5921	5961	6097	6163	6267	6161	6341	6605	6744	6251,11	0,21
Spain	107	65	65	75	48	41	52	29	39	57,89	20328	21151	21620	21362	23453	23055	22348	22937	22452	22078,44	0,26
France	93	79	85	82	93	76	68	88	73	81,89	74359	76884	79809	81961	86516	88610	:	:	91205	82763,43	0,10
Croatia	36	35	36	27	13	50	27	26	14	29,33	1169	1227	1322	1573	1769	1802	1711	1457	1080	1456,67	2,01
Italy	59	100	83	71	68	82	86	71	80	77,78	49254	50088	50185	49780	49524	48124	47172	:	:	49161,00	0,16
Latvia	32	32	30	28	29	17	22	13	18	24,56	806	889	986	975	941	748	741	733	717	837,33	2,93
Austria	47	44	43	52	40	36	30	35	36	40,33	8274	8685	8907	9167	10365	10184	10263	10426	10853	9680,44	0,42
Poland	276	291	277	359	308	365	285	327	274	306,89	18430	17882	18240	19524	19762	18128	17485	17633	17674	18306,44	1,68
Slovenia	12	5	9	17	9	11	14	4	5	9,56	695	716	724	740	765	773	729	689	659	721,11	1,33
Slovakia	10	7	63	57	56	73	58	49	68	49,00	2228	2182	2213	2165	2296	2264	2309	2431	2459	2283,00	2,15
Finland	24	22	22	18	21	14	13	5	6	16,11	3352	3478	3540	3778	4052	3876	3959	3882	4035	3772,44	0,43
Sweden	26	21	19	25	15	19	45	25	15	23,33	8634	8910	9617	10261	11146	11321	11155	11379	11792	10468,33	0,22
Norway	2	4	1	0	1	3	7	5	2	2,78		2723	2833	2958	3123	3080	3186	3076	3186	3020,63	0,09
Switzerland	:	:	:	:	23	29	19	11	24	21,20		:	:	:	17699	18497	19093	19387	19180	18771,20	0,11
Average	66,40	66,40	55,69	56,75	49,35	53,59	49,12	48,12	42,94	52,85	14946,79	14396,87	14024,38	14319,50	15112,18	15027,65	10342,73	8002,13	13406,80	14593,92	0,36

updated figure

Hi. According to the report you have given me, I updated the figure. I'm looking forward to receive your comments to add this figure to WP article. Thank you. João Pimentel Ferreira 12:44, 11 May 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)