Safety

Safety is an essential vector for the efficiency and reliability of the railway system. In this context, UIC’s aim is to implement mechanisms to facilitate complementary, non-competitive objectives between stakeholders, enabling sharing of experience and highlighting best practice and success factors, all the while keeping people at the centre of its efforts.

Key topics for the Safety Department include:

• improvement of the UIC Safety Database,
• the Human and Organisational Factors Digital Platform,
• safety at level crossings,
• trespassing and suicide prevention,
• digitalisation of safety management systems and global approaches to risk management.

Key challenges facing this business

The scale of time appropriate for measuring the effects of changes on safety is not measured in weeks, months or even years. Usually based on quarterly or yearly reports, measures against or in favour of safety may appear as harmless or ineffective. Similarly, when the safety level has visibly become too low, the time needed to reverse the trend might be too long to be acceptable by society.

Nevertheless, even if safety is a fundamental value of the railways all over the world, safety might be seen as jeopardising the railways’ business. However, it simply determines the right for the railway to exist, to survive, to operate its business. If railways are perceived as a threat to the safety of neighbours, environment, customers or staff, society will choose not to use railways.

Reference to how the business is organised

The structure of safety activities at UIC is as follows:

• The Safety Platform is an advisory body open to all UIC members, composed of Safety Directors (or equivalent) from member companies of UIC with a core objective to put in place recommendations and actions to help control, mitigate or eradicate the risks and eliminate their underlying causes and effects.
• The Safety Platform Steering Committee is a restricted group composed of the Chair, Vice Chair (if any), Safety Platform Working Group Chairs and Vice-Chairs (if any) and the UIC Safety Unit.
• The Safety Platform Working Groups are:
  • System Safety Management Group (SSMG)
  • Human and Organisational Factors Working Group (HOFWG)
  • Occupational Health and Safety Group (OHSG)
  • Safety Performance Group (SPG) / Safety Database
  • International Railway Safety Network (IRSN)
  • Global Level Crossing Network (GLCN)
  • Trespass and Suicide Prevention Network (TreSP-Network)
• Level crossing safety soft measures / ILCAD
• A special Group: International Union of Railways Medical Services (UIMC)