A national safety priority

Collisions between road users and trains at rail level crossings are a key safety concern internationally, and within Australia. The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator has identified rail level crossing safety as a top five national priority for Australia for 2022-2025.

Systems thinking to improve safety and manage risks

Traditional approaches to addressing rail level crossing safety issue have tended to focus on individual components such as engineering, enforcement and education. Systems approaches offer new insights to support an enhanced understanding of incident causation and an evidence-based approach for managing risk. Our research is helping to shift the focus of key stakeholders towards Human Factors and systems thinking approaches to improve safety at level crossings, reduce collisions and, ultimately save lives.

Industry partnership and funding

Our level crossing safety research was initially funded through an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project (LP100200387), in partnership with road and rail stakeholders in Victoria. This initial research program used a novel combination of Human Factors and systems modelling approaches to analyse and re-design rail level crossing environments (find a summary of the findings here). Subsequently, a program of work to assess road user behaviour at rail level crossings was initiated via direct funding through Metro Trains Melbourne on behalf of the Victorian Railway Crossing Safety Steering Committee (VRCSSC).

Research highlights and impact

• The systems thinking models developed in our initial research project was used to design a data collection instrument, the Behavioural Assessment Tool for Rail Level Crossings (BAT-RLX).
• The tool has been used to evaluate end user behaviour at over 15 RLX sites with assessments guiding specific design improvements and enabling cross-site comparisons.
• Research recommendations have been adopted by rail safety stakeholders to implement design changes at RLX sites.
• Annual research reports providing comparative data analysis across sites have demonstrated the use of latches on pedestrian emergency gates at level crossings prevents unsafe gate usage. Insights have been used to address concerns about potential unintended consequences of gate latches and influenced Victoria’s rail level crossing upgrade program.
• The research has informed strategic initiatives incorporated in the Victorian Government’s current Railway Crossing Safety Strategy, reinforcing the need for integration of a systems approach to safety at RLXs and behavioural assessments to capture data about road user performance at RLXs. The findings have also been used in various other safety initiatives including a Human Factors toolkit, risk modelling and planning for the adoption of future technologies to manage risk
• Our expert researchers are regularly invited to share their research findings with industry via forums and events such as Tracksafe’s 2022 Level Crossing Safety Forum.
• Our researchers have also contributed to standards development committees. For example, providing advice on Human Factors requirements for Australian Standard 7658 (Railway Crossings), released in 2020.