According to the latest annual safety review published by ERA, NSAs report a steady increase in signals passed at danger (SPADs) since 2016 (with the exception of the 2020 corona year).

From a safety culture perspective one can argue that an increase in reported SPADs is a positive sign of an increased risk awareness and overall reporting culture in Europe. However, from a safety management system perspective the trend is quite worrying. Especially, because the trend seems to be steady across countries regardless of the maturity of infrastructure and use of automation.

An informal and voluntary exchange with several RUs in Europe resulted in many different hypotheses on why SPADs are increasing. Some argue this is the aftermath of corona. More traffic requires more regulation and more red signals, and more risk of passing them at danger. Others find that retirement waves of train drivers bring in a large number of newcomers from a very different generation who grew up with social media and smartphones and have a different approach to safety and safe driving behaviour. Again, others think that career changers, whose second or third career path is in rail, have a different experience and motivation.

Whatever hypothesis lies behind the SPAD increase, all organisations agree that it is necessary to find the contributing factors to the steady SPAD increase. And everyone agrees that together we can achieve more. So this workshop invites you to share your knowledge and experience around SPADs, contributing factors you may have found or have investigated, methods, tools and approaches you took to manage them, success and failure stories, recent scientific studies, dissertations and other publications and discuss significant findings, possible solutions and pathways forward to manage the SPAD increase in the interest of keeping our passengers and frontline staff safe.