Public transportation safety data, collected by the Federal Transit Administration since 1979, include incidents, fatalities, and injuries that do NOT involve criminal activity. However, these data for many transit agencies were incomplete or inaccurate because those systems were not in full compliance with the FTA reporting requirements. In addition, it has been impossible to separate out patron-only data for the various types of safety incidents because data reported combined patrons, employees, and other persons (e.g., automobile and other vehicle occupants, pedestrians, bicyclists).
In 1995, the FTA improved its efforts to ensure compliance and revised its reporting form to report patron, employee, and other data separately for each type of incident. By 1996 most of the reporting problems had been eliminated.
In 2002 however, the FTA changed the way it collects and reports data. Data are no longer reported on an individual agency basis, and many categories have been grouped together. For instance, all fatalities are grouped together by mode, making it impossible to distinguish between fatalities caused by suicide, vehicle collisions, incidents in parking lots, etc. This also makes direct comparison between other modes of travel – air, highway – nearly impossible.
Also in 2002, thresholds for reporting incidents have changed. All injuries and incidents (collisions, derailments, personal casualties, fires and property damage) are only reported if immediate medical attention is required away from the scene or if property damage exceeds $7,500. Previously, all reported injuries and all property damage exceeding $1,000 (for transit agency property only) were taken into account.
One must be cautious when attempting to compare public transportation safety data to other modes of transportation. Along with the issues previously mentioned, other factors that make public transportation safety and security data unique are as follows:
- No other mode of transportation operates in an environment so fraught with the potential for injury--twice a day for three or four hours a continuing flow of thousands of people bump into and jostle one another in the constricted spaces of public transportation vehicles and on the platforms, ramps, stairways, escalators, and elevators of public transportation stations and transfer centers.
- Most public transportation buses and vans have built-in lifts or ramps to accommodate those using wheelchairs, walkers, and other mobility aids, while most rail, bus, and ferry stations have stairways, escalators, or elevators. All these have a significant risk factor resulting in a disproportionate number of safety incidents. No other mode of travel depends on such equipment to any significant extent.
- Minor incidents with less than $7,500 in transit agency property damage are not counted as safety incidents unless a fatality, injury (requiring immediate medical attention away from the scene), or fire occurs. Such incidents (e.g., a 2-mile-an-hour collision with a post or another vehicle resulting in a dented bumper or broken taillight) are so common that they are considered "wear-and-tear" incidents that have no safety implications.
- A fatality is defined as a death confirmed within 30 days of an incident, and can involve passengers, transit facility occupants, employees, other workers, trespassers and other individuals
- All fires are counted even if they involve something as minor as a cigarette burning in a trash can.
- Heavy and commuter rail stations act as magnets for those contemplating suicide, with about one-third of all deaths reported to the FTA for these two modes being suicides. In addition, there are numerous injuries to persons failing in suicide attempts as well as to public transportation vehicle occupants (due to emergency braking) and to others in the wrong place at the wrong time. These casualties inflate the public transportation total, but are obviously beyond the transit agency's control.
Some of these pages may include links to documents in the Adobe PDF format. Please download the Adobe PDF reader if you have not already done so.
