TABLE 1-3 - Transportation Accidents, Injuries, and Fatalities by Mode: 2004-2009

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NOTES: Some constituents of Air fatality, Railroad fatality, and Transit fatality data are preliminary, as seen in the notes of table 1-4.

Air data includes U.S. air carrier, commuter carrier, on-demand air taxi, and general aviation. 2009 air accidents data is preliminary. Air injuries include all injuries classified as serious.

Highway accidents include passenger cars, motorcycles, light and large trucks, and buses. Highway fatality and injury data includes passenger car occupants, motorcyclists, truck occupants in light and large trucks, bus occupants, pedestrians, pedalcyclists, and other. For Highway accidents the U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) uses the term "crash" instead of accident in its highway safety data. Highway accidents and injuries are not actual counts, but estimates of the actual counts. The estimates are calculated from data obtained from a nationally representative sample of crashes collected through NHTSA's General Estimates System (GES). Estimates are rounded to the nearest 1,000. Estimates less than 500 indicate that the sample size was too small to produce a meaningful estimate and should be rounded to 0. Highway fatalities are actual counts from NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) Encyclopedia database.

Pipeline data includes hazardous liquid pipelines and gas pipelines.

Railroad data includes highway-rail grade crossing, and train accidents (mostly trespassers). Railroad includes Amtrak. Railroad injuries include those injuries resulting from train accidents, train incidents, and nontrain incidents. Railroad injuries also include occupational illness. 2009 Railroad injuries data is preliminary. The actual number of deaths for passengers on trains from 2004-2009 was: 2004 (3), 2005 (16), 2006 (2), 2007 (5), 2008 (24), 2009 (3).

Transit data include highway-rail grade crossing and transit. Transit includes motor bus, commuter rail, heavy rail, light rail, demand response, van pool, and automated gateway. Transit accidents figures include collisions with vehicles, objects, and people, derailments / vehicles going off the road of Directly Operated (DO) modes only. Transit injuries include those resulting from all reportable incidents, not just from accidents, of Directly Operated (DO) modes only. Accident figures do not include fires and personal casualties. In 2008, the property damage threshold was changed to $25,000. Previously, any accident with property damage equal to or greater than $7,500 was reported.

Waterborne data includes commercial vessel-related, not related to vessel, and recreational boating.

Caution is needed in comparing fatalities across modes because of different definitions. For example, rail and transit fatalities include incident-related (not just moving vehicle-related) fatalities, such as fatalities from falls in transit stations or railroad employee fatalities from a workshed fire, while fatalities at airports not caused by moving aircraft or fatalities from accidents in automobile repair shops are not counted.

SOURCES: Air: National Transportation Safety Board; Highway: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; Pipeline: Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Office of Pipeline Safety; Railroad: Federal Railroad Administration; Transit: Federal Transit Administration; Waterborne: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Coast Guard as cited in U.S. Department of Transportation, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation Statistics, tables 2-1, 2-2, and 2-3, available at http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/ as of January 2011.