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In 2023, the United States registered 995 rail fatalities and around 6,700 non-fatal injuries on the railroads. Injury and fatality numbers had fallen during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, but 2022 saw a resurgence of accidents above pre-pandemic levels.

Positive Train Control (PTC)

Ever since the enactment of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (RSIA), the U.S. rail industry has been working on implementing the Positive Train Control (PTC) technology on over 60,000 miles of the rail network. The original deadline of December 31, 2015 was extended to 2018 after several railroads have stated they are unable to meet the deadline due to technical and legal complications. At the end of 2020, PTC had been implemented on railway routes that were required to do so.

The Positive Train Control consists of a bundle of state-of-the-art technologies is meant to avoid accidents caused by human error, track or equipment malfunction, faulty movement of trains through a grade crossing, breaches on railroad tracks and other types of train operator errors. More precisely, PTC aims to prevent train-on-train collisions, deflections caused by excessive speed or other derailments on tracks where maintenance operations are underway.

The technology uses a number of factors like weight and length of the train, track composition, train speed and train authorization in order to calculate the adequate stopping distance for a train. The PTC system includes an onboard locomotive system that monitors the position and speed of the train and triggers braking in case of speeding or unapproved train movement; a wayside system to check track signals, switches and track circuits for movement authorization; and a back office server that stores all relevant rail traffic information.

Until 2015, 6.4 billion U.S. dollars have been spent for the PTC deployment on over more than 2,300 of track miles and more than 4,500 locomotives. By 2020, the total costs had risen to more than 10 billion U.S. dollars.

Number of rail accidents and incidents in the United States from 2013 to 2023

Characteristic	Accidents/ Incidents	Injuries	Fatalities
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-

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Release date

July 2024

More information

Region

United States

Survey time period

2013 to 2023

Supplementary notes

To retrieve the data, select the Start month and End month and click Generate Report.
Includes freight railroad, Amtrak, and commuter rail operations.
Accidents/incidents includes all events reportable to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration under applicable regulations. These include: train accidents comprised of collisions, derailments, and other events involving the operation of on-track equipment and causing reportable damage above an established threshold; highway-rail grade crossing incidents involving impact between railroad on-track equipment and highway users at crossings; and other incidents involving all other reportable incidents or exposures that cause a fatality or injury to any person, or an occupational illness to a railroad employee.

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