More than 200 incidents in the first four years
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Thursday September 17 2009
WHILE yesterday's Luas crash was the first to involve a Dublin Bus, there have been hundreds of accidents since the system's introduction in 2004.
Figures released by the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) in December of last year showed there had been more than 200 incidents involving Luas trams in the first four years of its operation.
Just one year after the introduction of the light rail system in September 2004, there had been a total of 36 road traffic accidents involving vehicles and trams, most of which occurred as a result of motorists breaking red lights.
The average yearly count of accidents from 2004 to 2008 was 47, the majority of them occurring on the Red Line route.
Linking Tallaght in south west Dublin to Connolly Station in the city centre, the Red Line has a higher volume of passengers than the Green Line route which services south Dublin.
There has been one fatality so far, when a middle-aged man was knocked down and killed in February 2008. The accident happened on the Red Line at Cookstown Way in Tallaght, south Dublin, when the man was hit as he attempted to cross the tram lines.
Only one month after the Luas system began operating, a mother and her two young sons were injured when two trams collided head on at the St Stephen's Green Line terminus during rush hour. In March 2007, a tram collided with an articulated lorry on the Red Line, near Kilmainham, north Dublin. There were no serious injuries in the incident, but extensive damage was caused to the tram.
Two months later, a man received leg injuries when he fell under a Luas carriage at the Jervis Street in Dublin city centre.
A 20-year old man was seriously injured in December 2007, when he was hit by a Luas tram close to the Kingswood stop. Adrian Kelly spent over four weeks in a coma after the accident, eventually making a full recovery.
In December 2008, five people were hospitalised following a collision between a taxi and a tram on the Red Line near Smithfield, north central Dublin.
- Caitrina Cody
