Indian Railways has announced plans to introduce a slew of safety measures, including ways to bring down human error to make rail travel accident-free.
According to statistics, 86 per cent of the rail mishaps occur due to human error.
Railway Board Chairman S S Khurana, while inaugurating Safety Convention 2009, said: “The railways are speeding up safety drive, including more inspections and safety audits, to improve safety performances.”
He added: “Railways are recruiting more people and plan to cover up 5,000 unmanned level crossings in the first phase out of total 17,000 unmanned crossings.”
In addition to this, railways plan to upgrade signaling systems, increase efficiency of communication equipment, carry out track renewals, introduce induction heating systems, instead of LPG cylinders on platforms and trains for cooking, to better safety performances.
The number of railway accidents have declined to 0.19 per million train km in 2008-09 from 0.76 accidents per million train km in 2002-03.
