Accident prevention complex at passive level crossings

In the Russian Federation, most railway accidents take place at passive level crossings. The majority of scientific papers on the topic of crossings deal with the improvement of active level crossings operation. At present, there is no effective way to improve safety at passive level crossings. The subject of the study is passive level crossings. The aim of the paper is to develop a set of preventive measures to avoid accidents at passive level crossings. The article describes the cases of traffic accidents at level crossings of the West Siberian railway, studies the scheme of passive level crossings and offers a schematic diagram of the accident prevention system at passive level crossings. The work algorithm of the accident prevention system at passive level crossings and the algorithm of giving the locomotive a notification of an emergency situation at passive level crossings are presented. Using the existing coding scheme of the train protection system as a transmission line for information about an emergency situation at a level crossing allows simplifying significantly the scheme of the developed system. The paper also calculates the maximum permissible time of occupation of the crossing by motor vehicles and the time of coding change in the automatic locomotive signaling system of continuous type. The proposed accident prevention system at passive level crossings does not require additional equipment to organize the communication channel and is cost-neutral. Equipping passive level crossings with this system will improve train safety, reduce the number of accidents and increase the efficiency of the railway transport complex in general.