Citation

Kidda S, Chase S, Hiltunen D. U.S. Federal Railroad Administration. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration, 2020.

Affiliation

FRA Human Factors Division and the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center

Copyright

(Copyright 2020, U.S. Federal Railroad Administration)

The full document is available online.

Abstract

The John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe), under direction of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), developed the Trespasser Intent Determination and Evaluation (TIDE) criteria to assist railroads in making consistent and expeditious probable intent determinations of individuals involved in trespasser strikes. This work supports the FRA National Strategy to Prevent Trespassing on Railroad Property (2018) in improving rail trespasser data.

The TIDE criteria standardizes the assessment of information from an incident to determine the probable intent of an individual involved in a trespasser strike on a railroad right-of-way (ROW). Based on the criteria, one of three determinations for probable intent is made for each incident that results in a death or injury:

• Probable suicide

• Probable accident

• Inconclusive

Volpe partnered with two railroad carriers, which provided access to their trespasser strike incident report data, to demonstrate the use of TIDE criteria on incident data from 2009–2017. Findings showed that probable suicide determinations were similar between the official determination by a medical examiner or coroner and the TIDE criteria. However, TIDE was more likely to see accidents as inconclusive due to the absence of evidence. The lack of information available in some incident reports makes it impossible to render a determination.

In addition to fatalities, incident evidence on injuries can also be used to determine the probable intent of the individual, which is helpful in understanding the true extent of the trespass or suicide risk for a railroad right-of-wayROW.