RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.

The following summary of accident statistics is made up from the annual statements of the railways which have been returned to this bureau for the year 1905:

The aggregate number of persons reported as killed in connection with the operation of railways during the years since the Commission began collecting statistics, including those reported to this bureau for 1905, was as follows:

KILLED IN RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.

Passengers. Employes. Other persons. Total

*Commission's Bulletin No. 16, passengers and employes only.

Such statistics to be of any instructive value whatever should always be accompanied by the following summary of the passenger and freight traffic and the number of railway employes in order to comprehend their relation to the units of exposure to

This table affords gratifying proof that railway fatalities are not increasing in proportion to the increase of railway traffic.

Where these three chief units in railway risks have increased during the period between 1888 and 1905, inclusive, in the following proportions:

Passengers per mile .

Tons of freight per mile

Number of employes.

126 per cent.

196 per cent.

100 per cent.

-fatalities in railway accidents during the same period have

only increased in the following proportion:

To passengers

To employes

To other persons

70 per cent.

57 per cent.

106 per cent.

Besides these comparisons include the complete fatalities to passengers and employes in 1905 and only 91.12 per cent of the passenger and ton mileage for that year.

Note should also be made of the fact, frequently referred to by the official statistician, that railway accidents have been more fully reported in recent years than formerly-especially since the Act of March, 1901, requiring full monthly reports of railway accidents under oath.

A cursory study of the two tables reveals in a striking manner how railway accidents follow the rise and fall in the volume of traffic.

OFFICIAL ACCIDENT STATISTICS FOR 1905.

Under the Act of March 3, 1901, the Commission issues quarterly bulletins of accidents reported to it monthly under oath by the railways. These bulletins take no note of the number of casualties to "other persons" in railway accidents.

According to Bulletin No. 16 the casualties to passengers and employes during the year ending June 30, 1905, were as follows:

It will be observed that 1,282 or one-third of the fatalities charged to the railways in 1905 fall under the blind and uninstructive head of "other causes," that 767 resulted from "falling from cars or engines or while getting on or off," and that 2,700 or nearly three-quarters of the fatalities were "not in accidents to trains." The remaining 1,098 fatalities are chargeable to "accidents to trains."

These last figures constitute in themselves a sufficiently terrible record to call for the adoption of the most effective means for the protection of railway trains, without confusing them in the public mind with the total fatalities which attend railway operation as they attend every other industry employing such vast forces and numbers.

Statistics of railway accidents are either helpful or harmful as they aim to prevent their recurrence or are merely published to cater to a morbid popular appetite for sensation.

In Great Britain the quarterly returns of railway accidents to the Board of Trade are accompanied by the reports of official inspectors as to their causes fixing responsibility and recommending preventive measures in appliances or regulations.

In the United States there is no such investigation by experts into the causes of railway accidents, the statistics are given to the press in a sensational form and attention is directed too exclusively to automatic safety devices instead of the rigid enforcement of rules without which the best safety devices are vain. A majority of the worst railway accidents of 1905 occurred on lines protected by block signals.

GENERAL SAFETY OF RAILWAY TRAVEL.

If statistics were needed to reassure the public as to the general safety of American railway travel they could very easily have been furnished to the press along with the summaries of accidents. Unfortunately these summaries have usually stopped with bald and sensational aggregates of killed and injured and now the Commission is urging the abolition of the annual reports of accidents which are the only ones which permit of relative analysis with the enormous aggregate traffic to which accidents are an inseparable incident.

To illustrate the general safety of American railways, 104 roads reporting to this bureau in 1905 show the following remarkable immunity from fatalities to passengers in train accidents:

ROADS ON WHICH NO PASSENGER WAS KILLED IN TRAIN ACCIDENTS IN 1935.

Thirteen other roads reporting to this bureau having only one fatality each to passengers in train accidents afford the following showing of comparative safety:

ROADS ON WHICH ONE PASSENGER EACH WAS KILLED IN TRAIN ACCIDENTS IN 1995.