Modernization of railway signaling systems and improvement of railway safety measures have received significant public attention, especially since the Balasore train accident, when three trains collided in Odisha in June 2023. (Photo: PTI)
In the five-year period ending between 2022 and 2023 (financial year 23), an average of 44 train accidents occurred annually.
According to the Indian Railways, a train accident also involves serious consequences including injuries, loss of life, disruption of train traffic and damage to railway property.
The number of such accidents has decreased in recent years, although the collision rate is one in every three to four months.
In the period 2000-2001, more than 470 such railway accidents were reported, or approximately 39 per month. More than twenty years later, the number of train accidents fell by almost 90 percent.
The decline has been steady and fell further during the pandemic, when despite the decline in passenger trains, there were 22 railway accidents in 2020-2021 and 35 accidents in 2021-2022.
As many as 48 railway accidents were reported in the period 2022-2023 and 13 in the period 2023-2024 (data from July 2023) (Graph 1).
Although rail derailments remain the main reason for most of these accidents, the share of rail collisions has increased in 2022-2023 compared to previous years.
Of the 59 accidents in 2018-2019, derailments were responsible for 46 accidents.
There were 6 cases of fire in trains and 3 cases of manned and unmanned level crossing accidents each. There were no rail accidents caused by collisions that year.
In 2022-2023, collisions caused 6 of 48 rail accidents, while derailments caused 36 accidents. There have been four cases of rail collisions in July 2023-2024, data from a Parliament response last year shows.
In other words, there have been 18 collisions leading to a train accident in the past 64 months for which data is available. This amounts to one collision every 3.6 months (graph 2).
In a tragic accident early Monday morning, a freight train collided with the Sealdah-bound Kanchanjunga Express at the New Jalpaiguri station in West Bengal. It resulted in the deaths of 15 people and injured 54 others (latest figures at time of writing).
Modernization of railway signaling systems and improvement of railway safety measures have received significant public attention, especially since the Balasore train accident. Here, three trains collided with each other in Odisha in June 2023.
The accident, which some say is one of India’s deadliest railway collisions, killed about 300 people and injured more than 1,000.
The proportion of accidents was highest for the central region during 2022-2023, data from a reply in the Lok Sabha showed. It showed 8 casualties and 81 injuries across the country.
As many as eight, or 17 percent, of the 48 rail accidents in 2022-2023 occurred in the central region. This includes Mumbai, Nagpur, Bhusawal, Pune and Sholapur divisions.
The central zone is followed by the East-Central zone and the northern zone with 6 accidents each.
Of the 18 railway zones in the country, six of the zones had no accidents. This includes the North-East, South-West Zone, Southern, West Central, Konkan and Metro Railways (Graph 3).
First print: June 17, 2024 | 11:56 PM IST