Suicides and other fatalities from train-person collisions on Swedish railroads: a descriptive epidemiologic analysis...

Suicide is a dominating, although hidden, safety problem on Swedish railroads. The aim of this paper is to describe the epidemiology of fatal train-person collisions as a basis for systems-oriented prevention.

Data on collision circumstances were collected from narrative reports at the Swedish National Rail Administration.

The events were evenly distributed by months and weekdays, however, most suicides occur during the day while unintentional events usually occur at night. Most train-person collisions happened in densely populated areas, and 75% of the suicide victims were waiting on the track before the collision. Significance test between types of injury event (suicide, accident, or unknown intent) showed small or no differences.

Traditional approaches to accident prevention by systems modification seem largely applicable to combat railroad suicide as well.

Our findings show promising preventive potentials.