Collision risk assessment for an unguarded railway crossing

Abstract: Statistics show that over 97% of accidents at level crossings are caused by careless drivers. According to data from the National Police Headquarters in the report “Road accidents in Poland in 2007”, 45 people died and 127 were injured in 108 accidents at guarded and unguarded railway crossings that year. It is important to develop a model that allows for the assessment of risk at a railway crossing based on local characteristics of the vehicle stream using the crossing, as well as the intensity and periodicity of rail traffic. Since the greatest threat to drivers is posed by category C and D crossings, they should be upgraded to category A or B crossings. The model presented in this paper can be used to prioritize crossings based on accident risk and to identify particularly dangerous locations for rapid modernization.
1. INTRODUCTION
Accidents at railway crossings are particularly dangerous due to the long braking distance and the mass of the train. Although they account for a fraction of a percent of the total number of car accidents in the country, they are almost three times more severe in their consequences due to the number of casualties per single accident. In practice, we can distinguish two variants of accidents: the first, in which a train hits a wheeled vehicle located on the crossing, and the second, in which a car hits a train.
There are over 13,000 crossings in Poland, of which over 9,000 are equipped with light and sound signals or marked only with a St. Andrew’s cross and a STOP sign. Detailed data for the years 2003-2007 are presented in Table 12. (…)

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