Some of the reasons for rly travel have become dangerous due to occurance of accidents & deaths:
(1) Too many trains jostling on limited tracks for green signal as not enough new tracks have been added to network. Between 1950-2016, Route was expanded by 23% only, where as increase in pax. & Freight traffic is 1344%, 1642%.
(2) Over burden on Rly employees as the train traffic has gone beyond the levels of manual handling. This lead to human errors.
(3) Over...
more... crowding in trains as not enough new trains have been introduced. Paxs fall from running trains & during boarding/alighting.
(4) Not using latest signaling systems with provision of warning and auto application of brakes
(5) Delayed and improper adoption of new technologies to improve safety, reliability & capacity
(6) Poor law and order situation & lack of safety awareness among people in many parts of our country.
(7) The sabotageous activities by Naxalites/ foreign-terrorists is also a menace
(8) Misplaced priorities of IR where investment in safety/capacity augmentation takes back seat and populism prevails.