Europe's rail safety questioned

The crash is the worst in Belgium for many years

The Belgian train crash will leave many Europeans asking questions about the safety of rail travel.

Railway officials from the Belgian national rail company SNCB said that the trains collided after one of them ignored a red signal.

Passengers killed in 1999

UK 36

Germany 28

Italy 22

France

Austria 8

Source: Int's Union of Railways

Many EU countries, including Belgium, have installed safety systems which automatically apply the breaks if the train passes a red signal.

However even state-of-the-art technology cannot guarantee against accidents caused by human error.

Germany, for example, has installed a comprehensive safety system, but this did not prevent more than 100 people dying in a high-speed collision in Eschede in 1998.

Old infrastructure

A spokesman for SNCB told BBC News Online that the railway track on which the crash happened has a system called Memor, similar to the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system, which will stop the train if the driver fails to react to a red signal.

But the spokesman said it appears that the system did not work because the driver started the train from stationary at a red signal.

Countries that have invested heavily in their rail systems generally have a good safety record

Frazer Goodwin of EFTE

What is still not clear, said the spokesman, is why the train crossed the signal.

Although Belgium has a reasonably good safety record, the stretch of track on which the accident happened and the train itself were fairly old.

According to the European Federation for Transport and the Environment (EFTE), there is a correlation between safety and investment in railway infrastructures.

The UK, which has not installed ATP, has suffered a string of fatal train accidents in recent years, severely shaking public confidence in the railway system.

"Countries that have invested heavily in their rail systems, and who continue to do so, generally have a good safety record," Frazer Goodwin from EFTE told BBC News Online.

'Trains still safer than roads'

However, railway travel is still much safer than road travel, according to the International Union of Railways (IUR), a Paris-based monitoring group.

Commuters are 25 times more likely to be killed in a car crash

The figures released by the IUR indicate that in 1997, the last year for which comparisons are available, a commuter is 25 times more likely to be killed on the road as they are on Europe's railways.

Stephen Joseph, of the environmental lobby group Transport 2000, said it would be a mistake for commuters to return to their car because of fears over rail safety.

"The problem is that we expect the railways to be safe. We give control over them to someone else, but we feel our safety is in our own hands when we drive a car."

European Commission figures suggest that the number of people killed in train accidents has more than halved in the last 30 years.

In 1970, 381 passengers were killed in train crashes in the 15 EU countries, whereas in 1997 the number had fallen to 139. However, major crashes - such as the high-speed collision in Eschede, Germany, which killed more than 100 - can distort the statistics for individual years.

The IUR says over the last 10 years the number of train accidents has stayed fairly stable.