Railway Safety

Report Outline
Rail Accident and Travel Safety Records
Recent Rail Wrecks and Remedial Action
Rail Safety Devices and Safety Legislation
Special Focus

Rail Accident and Travel Safety Records

Increase of Railroad Passenger Fatalities in 1950

Three major train wrecks in 1950, two on the Long Island Rail Road and one on the Pennsylvania, took the lives of 144 persons and sharply reversed a six-year downward trend of railway passenger fatalities. During the war, when railroad equipment and railroad workers were put to severe strain to move unprecedented traffic loads, the number of railway accidents, fatalities, and injuries mounted far above prewar levels. But the safety record began to improve before the end of the war and showed marked betterment in the postwar years.

Passenger fatalities fell from a peak of 278 in 1943 to only 37 in 1949, which was the smallest number for any year in American railroad history except the low-traffic depression year of 1932. Now there has been a sudden shift from one of the best to one of the worst accident years. When the figures are all compiled, they are expected to show that around 180 train passengers were killed in 1950—nearly a fivefold increase in a single year.

Despite the poor 1950 record, travel by rail is much safer today than it was a few decades ago; it is also relatively much safer than travel by other means of transportation. However, the fact that bad accidents still occur shows the need for continuing efforts to reduce further the hazards of railroad operation. The recent jump in passenger fatalities provides one spur to those efforts. Another is the prospect that the expanding defense program will greatly increase traffic loads and density and hence the risk of accidents.