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:

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  • First of all, you do not cite anywhere on what years your data are based on, neither in the picture (absolutely necessary), nor on the WP Commons page, actually nowhere.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 (talkcontribs)
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 (talkcontribs)

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 ) 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 (talkcontribs)
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 (talkcontribs)

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 (talkcontribs)