ERAIL - Railway accident and incident investigations

The ERAIL database ((European Railway Accident Information Links) shall ensure that the information relevant to the safety of the railways in the Member States is accessible and transparent to all interested parties and stakeholders in the railway.

In the Railway Safety Directive 2004/49/EC and the Agency Regulation 881/2004 /with later amendments/, the Agency has been given the task of collecting and proving public access to: The investigation reports sent to the Agency in accordance with Article 24 of the Railway Safety Directive A biennial report on safety performance, based on CSIs, national reports on safety and accidents and its own information

This dataset contains railway accident investigations. Articles 19-25 of the Safety Directive outline the requirements for the investigation and reporting of accidents and incidents on the railway. Member States are required to notify ERA of accident investigations and to submit copies of the accident investigation report when complete. The responsibility for this activity lies with an Independent Investigation body within each of the Member States. The reports received are published by ERA.

Some investigation bodies investigate and chose to report to ERA a much wider range of incidents and accidents than those required by the Safety Directive with a view to sharing lessons learned from accidents at a European level. ERA encourages such reporting.

Consequently the following reports are not intended for statistical use but for information on the causal factors in accidents and on the recommendations issued to the National Safety Authorities.

Common approaches to the investigation and reporting of accidents are facilitated through the Network of National Investigation Bodies. Information on the activities of this Network can be found on the ERA web pages.