The latest road accident toll is reported on almost every night’s news.  But for information on accidents on public transport, you have to go to an obscure publication that few people even know of, that the media doesn’t report.

Would it surprise you to know that one category of road accident, passengers tripping and falling on and around trams, is on the rise?

We expect the road toll to keep falling despite more people driving.  Workplaces pay continuous attention to OH&S issues.  Yarra Trams mission statement is: To think like a passenger; To develop a “zero harm” culture; For continuous improvement.

If you are on trams every day like I am, you can easily see how accidents happen.  Overcrowding, climbing steep steps to get on and off, sudden stops and starts when people are moving through the vehicle and motorists who speed past open doors.

The report Tram related trauma in Melbourne, Victoria in Emergency Management Australia says accidents on trams between 2001 and 2008 grew faster than population growth.  They studied 1769 patients, of whom 107 had major trauma and 15 died from their tram related accident.  They concluded :  “ primary prevention of falls in trams and the separation of pedestrians from trams are key areas requiring immediate improvement.”

Transport Safety Victoria uses a different definition to the above study, which looked at all injuries where people went to hospital at some stage for treatment.  The monthly reports TSV require the tram operator to list all accidents leading to “ a person requiring immediate treatment as an in-patient in a hospital”  This looks very much like the first study’s definition of major trauma and produces a similar result – more than 10 per year.

We can see then that the problem of tram passenger accidents is continuing unabated, with at least 10 serious injuries and as many as 220 lesser ones per year.  Half of these are trips and falls on the tram or whilst getting on or off.

As we said in our report on the case for bringing back tram conductors, injuries to passengers is a major societal cost and if we can reduce it, this adds to the business case for restaffing the system. Someone who knows more about the costs of treatment and recovery from such injuries might be able to give us an estimate of the $ impact of all that trauma.

A tram with >150 passengers on it, less than sixty of those seated, which is constantly stopping to pick up and put down more, while sharing road space with cars, is a two person operation.  The driver’s got enough to do just avoiding the cars, and of course if they hit one, that’s going to send all their passengers flying. There were forty such bingles in 2010 according to VicRoads stats.

From a safety point of view, a tram conductor could do, well, what they used to do.  Help people on and off, keep people from blocking doors and signal the driver when it’s safe to move. More raised platform stops, required for disabled access, would make it easy, quick and safe for everyone to board and protect us from road traffic.

Let’s be clear about one thing though – travelling by public transport is many times safer than doing the same trip by car.  The federal transport safety department says per kilometer travelled, its six times safer to travel by train or bus than car.