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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 7 (December 1, 1932)

Train Fatality Risk in Britain. — Only 1 in 200,000.000

Train Fatality Risk in Britain.
Only 1 in 200,000.000.

The Report of the Chief Inspecting Officer of the Minister of Transport, on railway accidents in Great Britain during 1931, reveal that only eight passengers lost their lives in railway accidents that year.

Of the eight fatalities, three occurred in the Leighton Buzzard, three in the Carlisle, and one each in two other accidents, as compared with only one in 1930 and three in the previous year.

The figure is, however, less than half the average for the five-year period 1925–29, and the casualty incidence in the case of passengers during 1931 was not more than one killed in some 200,000,000 carried.

Compared with fatal accidents in connection with road traffic the list is striking, as during the first week-end of August, 1932, no fewer than eighteen people were killed in road accidents in Britain.

In a recent reference to the appalling loss of life every year on the roads, the British Minister of Transport, Mr. P. J. Pybus, stated that “battlefields are at present safer than British roads, on which 6,691 persons were killed and 202,119 injured in 1931.”

Commenting on the above figures, the Daily Mail observed that “if the fatalities increase in a proportionate ratio, most of the population will soon be living by accident.”

Reverting to the safety of rail travel, it is interesting to note that, as in the case of the British Railways, the New Zealand Railways have a really remarkable safety record. During the past seven years 170 million passengers have been carried without one fatality.