THE OLD COUNTRY'S RAILWAY DEATH ROLL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8548, 4 October 1907, Page 3

THE OLD COUNTRY'S RAILWAY DEATH ROLL.

(Prom Our London Correspondent.) LONDON, August 22. Big railway accidents were an unpleasant feature of 1906, and the combined death rolls at Grantham, Salisbury, and Elliott's Junction made the number of passengers who lost their lives on the railways of the United Kingdom last year considerably more than double the average of recent years. The Board of Trade annual report on railway accidents, issued yesterday, gives the number of passengers killed last year as 58, while the average calculated over the last 30 years is only 22. In 1905 the number was also heavy, being 39, but in the year before that the total was only 6, and in 1901 not a single passenger met with a fatal accident. Of the 58 people who lost their lives last year 56 were involved in the three great accidents, leaving only two to be otherwise accounted tor. Even last year's fatality list need not give fright to the most timid. The chances of meeting death in a railway accident are at their greatest too infinitely small for sleepless nights. Something over 1,240,000,000 railway tickets were issued by the different companies last year, and the passengers killed en route worked out to only one in every 21,000,000. When injuries resulting in something less than death are tak-jn into 1 account the proportion is stilt small, only one passenger in two millions failing to ■accomplish his journey in safety. And these figures entirely disregard the enormous number of journeys s made by season ticket-holders, so that the results are actually more favourable than appears. Thirty years ago, in 1876, one passenger was killed in every 14,000,000 who travelled, and one injured out of every 420,000These figures relate on'.y to passengers killed in accidents to trains. The entire toll of lives and limbs taken by the railways was much greater than they indicate. Including casualties of every kind, 1,169 persons were killed and 7,212 injured in 1906, but it may be noted that suicides did a good deal to swell the total of deaths. Detailed figures, together with a comparison with 1905, will be found in the following table: —

1906. 1905. T3 T3 r d 9 "7 9 QJ p p 3 hH 'b4 G (—1 Passengers — -Accidents to trains 58 631 39 396 Other causes 108 1949 109 1972 Servants — Accidents to trains 13 140 6 112 ■Other causes 425 4225 393 36S8 Other personsAccidents to trains 1 3 1 s Level crossings , 7G 24 57 31 Trespassers fineluding suicides) 455 106 439 113 ■Others 33 134 55 133 Totals 1169 7212 1099 6459