Evaluation of safety risks at railway grade crossings: Conceptual framework development

In recent times, there seem to have increased research activity in relation to developing appropriate models to assess the road traffic safety through collision prediction. However, a considerable amount of work has been carried out limited to safety at highway-railway grade crossings. The objective of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for rail safety evaluation at railway-highway grade crossings, using suitable safety risk scores (called ‘Safety Risk Index’), based on a combination of both accident frequency and consequences. The Safety Risk Index (SRI) is a simple composite index, which can measure, compare and rank safety levels at different risk situations and locations including worst and most dangerous locations. This approach facilitates the assessment of the safety risks at grade crossings; and identifies, ranks and priorities the worst performing crossings or the problematic crossings (Black-spots).