Page 24 - Report of the railway accidents investigated in 2021

3. Safety Investigations
3.1 Overview of completed investigations
During the year the Safety Investigation Bureau received 8 verbal accident notifications of accidents. This does not include known suicides or suicide attempts which, as premeditated acts by one of the parties, are not classed as accidents. In addition, a verbal initial notification was received of 5 incidents which were all track breakages. Of the accidents, 4 were level crossing accidents, the rest were classified by individual cases.
Looking back to the previous year, 2020, the Safety Investigation Bureau received 10 verbal accident notifications of railway accidents, in 2019 it was 19, in 2018, 33 and in 2017 they received 24 initial notifications of railway traffic accidents. The ESIB received notifications of 1, 5, 9 and 3 incidents in the respective years.
No serious accidents took place during the year. None of the 8 accidents had characteristics that would have required initiating a safety investigation. All occurrences involved relatively minor damage. Regardless, the Safety Investigation Bureau assessed the circumstances of two track breakages that took place in December 2021 and formed an opinion based on this which was forwarded to the parties involved and the Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority for their information the following year.
Type of case investigated
Number of cases
Casualties Deaths
Seriously injured
Estimated losses (EUR)
Table 1
Trend compared to last year
Summary of the safety investigations completed in 2021
Annual report 2021
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3.2 Safety investigations completed and commenced in 2021
All safety investigations conducted in Estonia have always been concluded within the prescribed one-year period. The investigation report has been presented and
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