How safe are Europe's railways?

A train derailment outside the northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela has left 78 people dead and more than 130 injured. The crash is the worst recorded in Spain for 40 years.

But how safe are railways in Europe? And how has their safety records changed over time?

The first place to look at is the European Railway Agency's (ERA) railway safety performance report published earlier this year. According to the agency, in 2011, there were 2,342 significant railway accidents reported in the EU resulting in 1,183 fatalities and 1,032 seriously injured.

Of the 2,342 significant accidents that occurred in 2011, 44 were classified as serious accidents by the National Investigation Bodies (NIBs) and as such were investigated independently. A 'serious accident' is defined as:

Any train collision or derailment of trains, resulting in the death of at least one person or serious injuries to five or more persons or extensive damage to rolling stock, the infrastructure or the environment, and any other similar accident with an obvious impact on railway safety regulation or the management of safety; 'extensive damage' means damage that can immediately be assessed by the investigating body to cost at least EUR 2 million in total

On average a derailment or a collision is reported at least every second day in the EU, according to the ERA, "causing significant disruptions to railway operations". The chart below shows how the number of accidents in the EU has changed over recent years by accident type.

Accidents to persons caused by rolling stock in motion and level-crossing accidents make up more than three quarters of railway accidents, excluding suicides. In these accidents, around 1,200 people are killed and a similar number are seriously injured each year.

How do UK railways compare?

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) declared in their 2013 health and safety report that "Britain continues to have one of the safest railways in Europe". But how do other countries in the EU compare? Obviously there are a lot of factors that affect the rail safety record of a country. The chart below by the ORR attempts to compare the passenger and workforce fatality rates across the EU railways from 2007 to 2011. Click on the image to see the full-size chart.

Covers 2007-2011. Click on the image to see the full-size chart

In their 2013 health and safety report, the ORR declared that:

Overall, the UK ranks as joint-first safest with three other European countries based on the number of train safety incidents. The UK was best amongst all European rail countries in managing passenger and level crossing rail safety; third at managing employee safety; and fifth for trespass, according to ERA safety common safety indicators.

The relatively small train safety datasets the ERA uses are susceptible to the heavy weighting applied to fatal rail accidents; Britain's last passenger train incident fatality was at Grayrigg in 2007.

A research project by the ERA gathered details of serious accidents in Europe with five or more fatalities for the period 1990-2009. In that period, they found there had been 99 such accidents with Hungary recording the highest number (12 serious accidents). Germany followed with 10 and Spain recorded the third highest number with nine.

But if you look at the above chart, it is clear that Germany's rail network is a significant part of the European transport system. Germany boasts 63,067km of track and the highest annual number of train-km.

What is the biggest cause of death?

Suicides, which are reported separately from accident fatalities, make up a staggering 69% of all fatalities on railways. Together with the number of unauthorised person fatalities, these categories accounted for 88% of all deaths within the railway system from 2009-2011.

Unauthorised persons are defined by the ERA as 'any persons present on railway premises where such presence is forbidden, with the exception of level crossing users'.

On average, eight suicides were recorded everyday on EU railways in 2011, according to the ERA. The total number for 2011 - 2,868 people - is the highest number since 2006.

If you look at the number of fatalities per victim category in the EU (excluding suicides) for 2010-11, unauthorised persons were the biggest victim category with 797 fatalities in 2011. In comparison, there were 38 passenger fatalities in the EU within the same time period.

How safe is it to travel by train?

Well, according to the ERA's 2013 health and safety report "comparisons of fatality risks for travelling passengers reveals that train is one of the safest mode of transport". The fatality risk for an average train passenger in the EU is around 0.15 fatalities per billion kilometres - three times lower than the risk for a passenger on a bus or coach.

Commercial flight passengers have the lowest risk with 0.1 fatalities per billion kilometres.

If you look at fatal train collisions and derailments per billion train-kilometres and derailments per billion train-kilometres, the overall level of railway safety in Europe, has gradually improved since 1990 (with "considerable scatter from year to year").

The ERA report shows that the estimated underlying average number of fatal train collisions and derailments per billion train-killometers has decreased from about 4.4 in 1990 to 1.3 in 2011. ERA do also state that:

Despite a positive long-term trend in the risk of fatal train collisions and derailments over the past two decades, the data suggests that the progress has been slowing down, in particular since 2004.

The downloadable spreadsheet has data gathered from the ERA report which has been used in this article. The table below lists fatal railway accidents between 1990 and 2009 (as gathered by an ERA research project).

Download the data

• DATA: download the full spreadsheet

More open data

Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian

Development and aid data

• Search the world's global development data with our gateway

Can you do more with this data?

• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk

• Follow us on Twitter
• Like us on Facebook