Problem: 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.
Method: Data on collision circumstances were collected from narrative reports at the Swedish National Rail Administration.
Results: 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.
Conclusion: Traditional approaches to accident prevention by systems modification seem largely applicable to combat railroad suicide as well.
Impact on industry: Our findings show promising preventive potentials.