This category includes accidental deaths involving trains (but not suicides involving trains, which are included in Map 31 Other suicide/undetermined accidents).

It includes pedestrians and pedal cyclists injured in collisions with railway trains or railway vehicles as well as occupants of railway trains or railway vehicles injured in transport accidents.

The first British railway fatality was William Huskisson in 1830. Such accidents of course can only occur where there are railways. The majority of such deaths are of pedestrians, for example at unstaffed level crossings. There is a high density of moving trains per person within London and some other major cities, and boys and young men are more likely to engage in dangerous play by railway tracks than are girls and young women.

These statistics include both mainline and underground trains, as well as heritage railways and other smaller operations. More than six out of seven of these deaths involve pedestrians, rather than people on bicycles or passengers/staff on the trains. 86% of those dying from this cause are males. Half of the deaths are accounted for by males aged 15-44 years.

Significant train crashes between 1981 and 2004 causing fatalities include: Clapham Junction 1988 (35 deaths), Southall 1997 (7), Ladbroke Grove 1999 (31) and Potters Bar 2002 (7), but the map relates to people’s home addresses.

The number of journeys that people make on trains, both mainline and underground, has grown by 40% since 1981 (ONS, 2000).

ONS (2000) Social Trends 30: 2000 edition, London: The Stationery Office.