Relevant industry bodies in Australia and New Zealand have launched Rail Safety Week, an effort to promote the message of rail safety to local communities across Australasia.

Rail Safety Week takes a multi-media form, with messages emblazoned on major roads, posters in train stations and brochures in community and information centres.

The flagship of the annual safety effort is a ‘supersite billboard’ on the Hume Highway carrying the campaign message to “Train yourself”. It aims to reinforce the fact that the onus is on the individual to obey the rules around railway lines; stop, look, listen, think.

Australasian Railway Association (ARA) CEO, and TrackSAFE Director Bryan Nye says: “Railway safety remains one of the industry’s highest safety priorities with Australia’s rail network being the sixth largest in the world, with 44,000km of track and 23,500 level crossings... rail is the safest form of land transport. The issue is behavioural - when people go to take risks around railway lines they fail to realise that trains always have right of way and simply cannot stop quickly. It can take a fully loaded freight train up to 2km to stop.”

For more information including potentially life-saving tips, visit the Rail Safety Week website.