RESEARCH ARTICLE
Safety Audits at Finnish Level Crossings
Veli-Pekka Kallberg*, 1, Anne Ahtiainen1, Jouni Hytonen2, Tapio Ahonen1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 5
First Page: 80
Last Page: 87
Publisher ID: TOTJ-5-80
DOI: 10.2174/1874447801105010080
Article History:
Received Date: 11/5/2010Revision Received Date: 23/8/2010
Acceptance Date: 29/9/2010
Electronic publication date: 6/10/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Safety audits of Finnish level crossings have been carried out for 10 years at an average pace of 400 level crossings per year. Altogether 3 863 level crossings have been audited - more than 95% of all level crossings on the state railways. The objective of the audits is to improve safety at level crossings so that vigilant and motivated road users can cross the railway safely. The audits include systematic and extensive at-site recording of the physical characteristics of the level crossing, description of traffic on the railway and the road, a number of photographs, and recently also video clips. The main output from the audits consists of recommendations for safety measures. The data collected can also be used for statistical analysis, such as calculation of the safety index for individual level crossings. A PC application for viewing the data, photos and video clips of individual level crossings is a handy tool for those responsible for level crossing management.