PS124-3: Describe how the study of psychology is relevant to students’ career field.
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Risksconnectedwithrailwaytransport.pdf
Science & Philosophy ISSN: 2282-7757
Vol. 4(2), 2016, pp. 117--125 eISSN: 2282-7765
117
Risks connected with railway transport:
sociological-psychological point of view
Olga Becherová
University of Defence, FML
Kounicová 65/662, 662 10 Brno
Received on: 01-10-2016. Accepted on: 30-11-2016. Published on: 01-02-2017
doi: 10.23756/sp.v4i2.300
© Olga Becherová
Abstract
The article brings a completely unconventional view of the issue of
examining causes of the worst railway disasters in the Czech Republic
and Slovakia, as well as marginally in the world. The author is trying to
find an answer to the question: “If the individual overviews of
emergency events are analyzed, do the results relating to the cause of
these emergency events differ?”
Keywords: railway transport, risk, railway disasters.
1. Introduction
The author has been analyzing risks connected with railway transport for a
long time. She particularly examines the causes of emergency events on
railway in passenger transport as well as in freight transport especially in
relation to transport of dangerous substances on railway.
During the study she gathered a large amount of data from various sources
– i.e. freely accessible sources, as well as internal sources of the biggest cargo
carrier in the Czech Republic. Especially studying the information about
railway disasters from freely accessible sources then motivated both of the
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authors to think about the issue from another point of view – sociological-
psychological.
When searching the internet, using key words such as railway
disaster/accident, overview of railway accidents/disasters, you find:
1. Information about a specific situation (place, persons involved in the accident, number of casualties, number of injured people, causes, etc.)
2. A lot of overviews by various authors, such as: a. The most serious accidents on railway b. The most tragic railway disasters c. The overview of the worst tragic accidents on railway d. Etc.
All of these overviews have one thing in common, that is the use of
adverb “the most terrible”, “the most serious”, or “the most tragic”.
Everybody intuitively understands the meaning of this adverb. However,
if you want to use it as a “criterion” for further study, its clear definition based
on which it would be possible to define the membership function of a set of
“most serious railway disasters” is missing. Not only none of the authors of the
above-mentioned overviews tried to make such definition, but also in most
cases they did not state a brief description of their own points of view and
criteria according to which they created the overview. The range of various
overviews of railway disasters especially in the Czech Republic and Slovakia,
which are available to the authors, is rather wide – from book publications
such as (Gulík, 2006); very specific and unique overview contained in the
archive fund of ÚV KSČ – Department of transport and communications
(Source 3), internal materials of railway (CD Cargo, 2016); detailed overview
done by a serious journalist of public television (Source 1, Source 7), to many
overviews from various private blogs and websites (Source 2, Source 4,
Source 5, Source 6). With regards to the sociological width of the range of the
authors of the overviews, there is a logical question:
“If the individual overviews of emergency events are analyzed, do the
results concerning causes of these emergency events differ?”
To be more accurate – regardless of who, with what aim, for how long
periods of time, and according to what criteria the specific overview of
emergency events was created – do the causes of these events differ? If yes,
how?
From the sociological point of view, the authors considered the
opportunity to answer this question based on statistical analysis of the causes
of emergency events in the individual overviews to be very interesting.
Risks connected with railway transport: sociological-psychological point of
view
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2. Data From all collected data were, for this paper, chosen data from Source 1
and Source 2 and the comparison was done.
Discussion
The authors is neither an expert of sociology, nor psychology. The
examined question and the issue described in the chapter came up
spontaneously during the study of EE on railway from a completely different
point of view, as the authors focus on the examination of the causes of risks
leading to railway disasters.(Becherova, 2016), (Bekesiene et al., 2016),
(Hošková-Mayerová, Becherová, 2016).
Are not people these days – when all types of media inform us every day
about tragedies from all over the world – hardened against tragedies of others?
How does the fact that some media try to surpass the others with “gore” of
their news influence a contemporary man? How did the perception of this term
change – if it changed at all – in times when the information was passed on
only orally, then telegraphically, by radio, etc.? How did people 200, 100 years
ago perceive the term tragedy?
It would certainly be interesting to find out with the help of sociological
research what people nowadays perceive as “the worst railway disaster”, or
“tragic railway disaster”. What is nowadays actually hidden in the term “tragic
accidents”. Are they only those with casualties? If yes, then is one enough, or
do there have to be more casualties than one, how do people perceive an
accident with a higher number of seriously injured people, but with no
casualties? Is it also tragic?
Another interesting topic in this connection is the question:
“How is this term perceived by the professionals of all units of the
integrated rescue system (IRS)?”
They are – unlike general public – confronted with tragedy in their every-
day work. Depending on the type of their profession, some more, some less,
but all of them have had an experience with an EE firsthand. This experience
must necessarily influence each individual. The question is how, and how the
perception of the term “tragedy” changes.
Conclusion
Security and safety have been a very important factor in everyday life of
people for many years. At present, there are many definitions related to
security and safety; those are being developed and adapted to today´s modern
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times. Security disturbance may cause serious consequences on safety,
certainty and continuity of the state function at emergency situations.
(Rosická, 2002), (Rosická, Beneš, 2007). Transport infrastructure belongs to
the most significant critical infrastructure components. Solving questions
related to security, protection, assessment or critical infrastructure assessment
is among hot current issues.
References
Becherová, O. (2015) Aplication of point method in risk evaluation for
railway transport, Ratio Mathematica, 29: 15-24
Bekesiene S. & Hoskova-Mayerova S. & Becherova O. (2016)
Accidents and Emergency Events in Railway Transport while Transporting
Hazardous Items. In: Proceedings of 20th International Scientific Conference.
Transport Means. Kaunas: Kaunas University of Technology, p. 936-941
ČD Cargo (2016) Internal documents, (internal materials of railway
company ČD Cargo)
Gulík J. (2006) Železničné nehody na Slovensku, Knihovna Světa
železnice, Corona, Praha
Hošková-Mayerová Š. & Becherová O. (2016) Risk of probable
incidents during railways transport, Uniwersytet Szczeciński Zeszyty
Naukowe, in print
Rosická Z. & Beneš, L. (2007) Transport Engineering as an Important
Part of the Economy. Wydawnictwo Menedžerskie PTM, Warszawa
Rosická Z. (2002) Carriage of Hazardous Goods, Classification,
Packaging, Labelling. Study on related measures. Horwegh & Quint, Advisory
and Consult Ltd., Netherlands: Amsterdam, 17 pp
Skřehot P. & et al. (2009) Prevence nehod a havárií 2. díl: mimořádné
události a prevence nežádoucích následků, Výzkumný ústav bezpečnosti
práce, Praha
Online references:
Source 1: Stéblová – name of death (2010) Available online:
http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/domaci/1434088-steblova-jmeno-smrti,
Praha, In Czech.
Source 2: The largest railway accident in the Czech Republic (2016)
Available online: http://www.top365.cz/podrobnosti.php?tema=36, (In Czech:
Risks connected with railway transport: sociological-psychological point of
view
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Největší železniční neštěstí v České republice, Přehled největších železničních
neštěstí na našem území).
Source 3: Miroslav Kunt, (1997, 2008) Overview of railway accidents
and traffic disturbances in the 50s, Železnice & Historie, archivní fond ÚV
KSČ, Available online: http://archiv.kvalitne.cz/drobnost/nehody.htm, (In
Czech: Přehled železničních nehod a poruch dopravy v 50. letech .
Source 4: ČTK. (2008) The most tragic train accident in the Czech
Republic by the number of victims. www.Ceskenoviny.cz, 2008-08-08, [2015-
07-23]. Available online. (In Czech. Nejtragičtější železniční nehody v ČR
podle počtu obětí)
Source 5: Pražan J. (2013) Krouna - the most tragic accident of the
'90s, Avaliable online: http://www.krouna.cz/articles.php?article_id=2340, (In
Czech. Krouna - nejtragičtější nehoda 90. let).
Source 6: Novák D. (2016) Hradec nad Svitavou 13. September 1967,
Týdeník Českých drah – ŽELEZNIČÁŘ, Available online:
http://www.cd.cz/old/TCD2008/8_10neho.htm, In Czech
Source 7: Pösel M. (2015) Database of rail accidents in the Czech
Republic and Slovakia, Available online: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Transport_accident_statistics, In Czech
Source 8: Honuš A. (2016) On The Track At The Studenka The Same
Tragedy Has Already Occurred. 25 years ago, Avaliable online:
http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/375953-na-trati-ve-studence-se-uz-stejna-
tragedie-odehrala-pred-25-lety.html, (in Czech: na trati ve studénce se už
stejná tragédie odehrála. před 25 lety
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