Railway Accidents: Duties towards employees

Railway accidents were frequent and employees were the typical victims. The 1877 British Royal Commission on Railway Accidents reported that from 1872-1875 on average 1308 people were killed each year on the railways, and a further 4236 were injured. More than half of these were employees of the railways (on average 741 deaths each year and 2252 injuries). In 1875, 3 employees were killed for every 1000 people working on the railways. German studies also show that injuries to employees of the railway companies from 1851 to 1879 on average accounted for 76% of all injuries suffered from railway accidents.

Despite injuries on such a large scale, railway employees did not recover compensation against their employers. Prussian railway companies included terms in their contracts with their employees which removed their right to sue under the Prussian Railways Act 1838. Instead, employees had to be content with any private insurance scheme that the company had set up for its employees. In England, railway employees also depended on insurance schemes or gratuitous payments from their employers. In 1877, a railway manager, Captain O’Shea, stated that his company did pay compensation to a workman’s family if he died in a railway accident. But “We treat it as a case of charity; the man has no legal claim on us…[On death] a sum of £10 [worth £460 in 2007] is given [to the family] when there is no particular case of distress. When there is a case of a family, it comes to this, that we employ the children and put them in our service, and give them employment rather than a sum of money.”

A major difficulty for employees using private law to get compensation from their employer for injuries was that they could not prove fault. Indeed, it was found that 90% of accidents occurred because of the employee’s own carelessness. Solutions were found by the legislator.

Compensation for employees was created by the legislator, not the courts. The German legislator established liability for injuries to employees in 1871 and this was replaced by an insurance scheme for all employees in 1884. Under this scheme, an employee could obtain compensation from an insurance fund automatically if he suffered an injury at work, without having to wait to sue his employer (and pay a lot of money on lawyers’ fees). The United Kingdom passed a similar law in 1897 and France did the same in 1898.

The legislator also controlled the working hours of railway employees. The British Railways Regulation Act 1893 led to a reduction in fatal accidents. By 1899, there was only one death a year among every 1000 railway employees, rather than the three deaths among every 1000 employees recorded in 1875.