Page 56 - Operation Lifesaver Estonia / Annual Report 2012

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© Operation Lifesaver is a international, non-profit education and awareness program dedicated to ending
tragic collisions, fatalities and injuries at highway-rail grade crossings and on railroad rights of way.
Founded in Estonia on 19 November 2004 - www.ole.ee
In June 2012 graduated from the Haapsalu College
of Tallinn University the first group of traffic safety
specialists. Among other graduation papers there
were two papers discussing railway safety: Lii Erm
defended her paper called “Traffic behaviour of
motor vehicle drivers at the railway level crossings
located in Rapla town and rural municipality”
and Aire Tammik her paper with the title “Traffic
behaviour of pedestrians at the Lilleküla railway
level crossing in Tallinn”. The decision to write the
graduation papers about railway safety was made at
the railway safety conference “Let’s save lives 2011”.
The presentations made during the conference
gave us a lot of information about the work done
in the field of railway safety and the measures that
are planned in different countries. We were quite
surprise to hear the railway safety statistics of
Russian Railways, for example.
So we got the idea to start researching railway
safety in Estonia. Aire chose her topic for the paper
because the behaviour of the light road users at
railway level crossings had not been researched in
Estonia. The object of the research became the only
pedestrian crossing with traffic lights in Estonia
located in Lilleküla Tallinn. The average movement
frequency of light road users there is in workdays
about 180 persons per hour and in one day the
train stops are used by more than 60 rail vehicles
going in both directions. Pedestrians must cross
there a four-track railway section with the width of
35 metres. According to the Technical Surveillance
Authority, most of the accidents happen due to
the inattentiveness of people, violation of traffic
regulations and false assessment of the speed and
distance of an approaching train. The purpose of the
paper was to identify, based on observations at the
Lilleküla level crossing in Tallinn, why do accidents
happen and how do people really behave at level
crossings.
The research showed that there is a vast discrepancy
between the norms and actual traffic behaviour.
It appeared that in everyday traffic environment
the rules do not apply similarly to everybody and
the violation of rules by light road users was very
common, regardless of the time or weather. More
than 50% of the road users did not follow the
applicable regulations. Therefore, the analysis of
observations indicated explicitly that the situation
needs changing. It is excellent that the changes
have already taken place – a pedestrian tunnel has
been built at Lilleküla level crossing.
Lii chose the topic for her graduation paper based
on her work as a driving instructor. She sees every
day how drivers violate the traffic regulations at
railway level crossings. During her research she
observed the traffic behaviour of motor vehicle
drivers at two different level crossings. During
the observation she registered if the drivers made
sure that the level crossing was safe, driving speed,
In order to influence the behaviour/
attitudes of people, one needs to
know their knowledge, wishes, beliefs,
experience and actual behavioural
patterns at railway level crossings.
Aire Tammik and Lii Erm
Haapsalu College of Tallinn University, Traffic Safety
Department graduates