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What should be included in a charge?
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- 1.3Swedish railway accidents
1.2What should be included in a charge?The discussion about what should be included in the charge has been rather woolly. It has been a ‘feeling’ that accidents due to illegal behaviour should not be included. It has also been a discussion on how to allocate the cost between rail and road users. The solution, as often with cost allocation models, has been an arbitrary allocation of the cost. In an optimal safety policy both the protection device, the legal system, enforcement and the traffic volumes will be optimal. The optimal protection device will probably not ensure zero accidents independently of the human behaviour. With the legal system and enforcement, the society tries to ensure optimal safety behaviour. However, this optimal behaviour will probably not be a ‘zero-fault’ behaviour. Consequently, in this optimal system, safety issues will affect the optimal railway traffic. In addition, in the decision on the optimal railway traffic, illegal behaviour among other users has to be expected. On the other hand, the system may not be in an optimal stage. We will then have a discussion on the optimal traffic volume based on a second best approach. While the outcome of this second best is not clear, it is clear that it exists principles that will guide us through such a discussion. We do not need to ‘feel’ that it should be in a certain way. With the marginal cost theory and empirical estimation lined out in the rest of this paper, the allocation problem is resolved with a simple marginal cost theory. 1.3Swedish railway accidentsBanverket is since 1997 responsible for the collection of Swedish railway accident statistics on state owned railways. All the main tracks are owned by the state (75% of the length). Of the private railways are 59% tracks at industrial sites and the rest museum tracks and similar (Inlandsbanan). A railway accident is defined as an accident involving train in motion and where persons have been killed or severe injured, within or outside the train, or the cost is above 10.000 ECU. Fatality is defined in the same way as in road accident statistics, i.e. fatality within 30 days of the accidents. Severe injury is defined as persons that have a certificate of illness for more than 14 days6. Table 1 2: Railway accident statistics, 1995 - 1999
Source: Banverket Statistik over olyckor på statens spåranläggningar 1998 and dito 1990; for 1995, SIKA, Transport och Kommunikation, Årsbok 1998 A) Excluding suicide 1995 and 1996; Not available (..) If we ignore the frightening amount of suicides, road/rail level crossing accidents was the most frequent cause fatalities in the railway system 1999 (57%). The second largest categpry were other accidents with non-rail staff or passengers (33% in 1999). Railway is a safe system for the train passengers (0 fatalities 1999) while railway employees have a higher probability to be killed or injured (10% of the fatalities 1999). Turning to the accidents the same pattern occur; around 1/3 of all accidents were road/rail level crossing accidents in 1999. Directory: projects projects -> H1N1 Pandemic 21-393 Fall 2009 projects -> Terminal Decision Support Tool Systems Engineering Graduate Capstone Course Aiman Al Gingihy Danielle Murray Sara Ataya projects -> Rajinder Sachar Committee projects -> Cape Lookout National Seashore Historic Resource Study By projects -> Cape Lookout National Seashore Historic Resource Study By projects -> Revolutionizing Climate Modeling – Project Athena: a multi-Institutional, International Collaboration projects -> What is a Hurricane? projects -> General Information projects -> Press Information projects -> 1 Introduction 3 2 Designing an Embedded System 4 Download 0.55 Mb. Share with your friends:
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