According to the Federal Railroad Administration, in 2023, there were 27 trespassing deaths and injuries on rail corridors in North Carolina, a 23% increase from the number of casualties in 2022. Although various research studies, both outside and within North Carolina, have examined the causes of rail trespassing casualties, preventing these deaths and injuries remains challenging due to the complexities of human behavior and the social and environmental conditions that bring pedestrians into contact with rail lines. Therefore, this research project proposes a new, Safe System-based approach to analyzing and addressing pedestrian rail trespassing incidents.
The Safe System Approach is a public health paradigm of transportation safety management that holds human vulnerability and human fallibility as critical considerations for how to proactively prevent transportation deaths and injuries. The Safe System Approach has been formally adopted by the United States Department of Transportation and is central to the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan. Applications of the Safe System Approach often entail an assessment of three parameters: road users’ exposure to conflicts, the likelihood for those conflicts to become crashes, and the severity of crashes when they occur. In the context of rail trespassing incidents, implementing the Safe System Approach involves understanding pedestrian exposure to rail crossings and the likelihood of trespassing because rail strikes tend to be severe. If the mechanisms behind exposure and likelihood can be better understood, then countermeasures can be applied.
To accomplish this Safe System assessment, we propose combining multiple data streams to build a knowledge base of a model rail trespassing incident so that a systems science-based evaluation method, the AcciMap, can be applied to identify the critical risks that lead to fatal and severe trespassing incidents. We propose supplementing data collected for previous NCDOT projects with survey data, literature-derived risk factors, desk reviews, and field visits to establish a foundation upon which we can apply the AcciMap method. Using the causal links identified through AcciMapping, we can then identify countermeasures to the risks. We will translate these methods into reproducible, locally relevant guidance for transportation agencies and local governments.
The team of researchers from the UNC Highway Safety Research Center and North Carolina A&T University are uniquely poised to conduct this research project. We are national leaders in Safe System research and have completed rail safety research upon which this project will build. We understand the need for novel thinking to address safety risks while also recognizing the hyper-local focus this analysis requires. We are well-equipped to produce useful resources for practitioners, such as a Safe System-based rail safety checklist and guidance for risk identification and countermeasure selection. A final report documenting the project’s findings will be accompanied by presentation materials for sharing results and a more detailed implementation plan to facilitate uptake by State and local transportation agencies.
