Principal Factors Affecting Railroad Hazardous Materials Release Accident Risk. C. P. L. Barkan and C. T. Dick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, HDR Engineering
The US freight railroad accident rate has declined by over 60% since 1980 and the hazardous materials release accident rate has declined by nearly 90%. This reduction in accidents makes identification and implementation of further improvement more challenging because there is less empirical information on which causes are contributing the greatest risk. Consequently, more sophisticated methods are needed to identify the best options for improvement. Of particular interest is identification of the principal causes of accidents that result in the release of hazardous materials. Although all accidents are a source of concern, hazardous materials accidents are particularly important because of their potential to harm people, property and the environment in the event of a major release. Because of the relative rarity of hazardous materials release accidents, railroads cannot manage their safety improvement efforts solely in response to the occurrence of hazardous materials accidents. Instead a better understanding of the factors that are predictive of the conditions that can cause a release is needed. We conducted an analysis of railroad derailment data to identify the conditions most likely to lead to a railroad hazardous materials release. Our objective was to identify proxy variables that can be used as performance measures. For a release to occur in an accident there must be some type of breach of the container (generally a railroad tank car). We investigated the accident conditions that were correlated with hazardous materials rail car releases. We found that speed and number of cars derailed were both highly correlated with hazardous materials release occurrence. Based on these results, we found that some accident causes have a much higher likelihood of leading to a release than others and that accident prevention efforts focused on reducing these causes are more likely to reduce the risk of a major railroad hazardous materials release accident.
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