It would be interesting to see some table with stats of road vehicle - train collisions with the make and year of the car, the cause of the accident. In my country almost all Soviet lorries have been replaced with new ones. The one I talked about was a quite new Scania which is not some Russian ZiL or GAZ or KAMAZ or any other. Our level crossing have a phone number written on them but I'm not sure if that is only to report that the LC equipment is not working or also to warn trains that you have broken down on the tracks.
On a side note: All LC's with barriers emit a warning sound when the barriers are closing. But it seems to me that the new Bombardier equipment warning sound is much much more quiet than on the older crossings.
viesturs, with reference to your statement " the age of the commercial truck In my country, almost all Soviet lorries have been replaced with new ones" I would have to say that the age of any truck has little bearing on its roadworthiness. It is felt that in the UK most driver single shifted vehicles average between 78,000 and 100,000 miles per year.
However in the Britain and many other countries throughout Europe these days vehicles operating from regional distribution centres for supermarkets etc, run on 2 or even 3 driver shifts per day (three drivers doing an eight hour shift each per vehicle, or two drivers doing 10 to 12 hour shifts per vehicle). The foregoing vehicles will average 800 to 900 miles every 24 hours and therefore in the first 15 days of operation from new a truck will have done more miles than the average car does in 12 months.
With the foregoing in mind it is obvious that the highest standards of maintenance is essential from the very outset of a vehicle's life to maintain maximum road-worthiness and it would seem that many vehicles on Russian roads fall well below that standard.
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Source reference: British road haulage Association, British freight transport Association, professional highway safety Journal)
Visestur, you also requested statistics for accidents at level crossings within Europe. Here are some of the statistics compiled from 2008/2009 which is the latest data following in depth investigations. As you can see that Latvia had the highest accident rate at level crossings per head of population and the United Kingdom the lowest
Country…………. number of people killed in level crossing accidents………. rate per head of population
Hungary……………………………………………….. 118…………………………………………………………… 1.18
Germany……………………………………………….. 52………………………………………………………………0.06
Czech Republic………………………………………..43……………………………………………………………..0.42
Romania…………………………………………………..42………………………………………………………………0.20
Poland……………………………………………………..40……………………………………………………………..0.10
France………………………………………………………38……………………………………………………………..0.06
Latvia……………………………………….27……………………………………………..1.20
Austria………………………………………………………25……………………………………………………………..0.30
Netherlands……………………………………………..18……………………………………………………………..0.11
Spain………………………………………………………….17…………………………………………………………….0.04
Portugal…………………………………………………….17……………………………………………………………..0.16
Slovakia……………………………………………………..17……………………………………………………………..0.31
Great Britain………………………………..14……………………………………………..0.02
source reference UIC, European Union Institute for collective studies.
Much more data can be obtained from the above sources including, injury figures, near misses, car and truck type and pedestrian deaths and injuries breakdown.
With the greatest of respect viesturs, can I remind you that it is protocol when challenging anyones statements, that the person challenging come forward the necessary statistics themselves and not request the person being challenged to do so.
Bill
