U.S. Federal Railroad Administration
Accident/Incident Database 1980-2001
 
 

How do I query the database to quickly find the specific information I'm looking for?

This database contains a tremendous amount of data, but it wouldn’t be very useful to you if it didn’t provide some means to quickly identify and display a small subset of records that match what you’re looking for.  For instance, say that from the entire pool of highway grade crossing accidents that have occurred in the U.S. since 1980, you would like a list of only those accidents that occurred in the State of Texas between 1994 and 1996 between 4:00PM and 6:00PM in the afternoon, involving freight trains, having sight distance obscured by vegetation.  Let’s look at an example of how you enter this “criteria” and obtain the list you want.
 
 

The opening screen in each of the four database modules resembles the one shown above, and is composed of three basic “areas.”

The area circled in green above is called the “Record List”, and is a list of records in the database that match the criteria entered in the “Criteria Box” section in the red area of the form.  If there are no entries in the Criteria Boxes, the Record List displays all records in the database.  The blue area of the screen is called the “Control Button” area.

To get a feel for how this works, let’s look at an example.  We’ll use the “Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Accident/Incidents” module to demonstrate.  When you first enter this module (by clicking its button on the opening screen), it displays all 35,813 records (this number will increase with each succeeding IGRS release) .
 
 

Since we haven’t yet entered anything in the ‘Criteria Boxes”, the 35,813 records displayed represent all of the records in the Highway Grade Crossing accident database.

Type “Between 1/1/94 and 12/31/96” (without the quote marks) in the “Date” Criteria Box, as shown below:
 
 

Click the “Requery” button in the lower right portion of the screen.  Your computer will “think” for a few moments and return 13,869 records, which represent all of the highway crossing accidents in the U.S. that occurred between 1/1/94 and 12/31/96.

Let’s take it a step further.  Leaving the entry you made in the “Date” Criteria Box, type “Between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM” (again, without the quote marks) in the “Time” Criteria Box, then click “Requery.”
 
 

The database returns 1,670 records, representing all of the accidents in the U.S. that match the combination of these two sets of criteria.  Now, click the “down arrow” in the “GSA State Code” Criteria Box to display a list of U.S. states.  Select “Texas” from the drop-down box (the GSA code corresponding to Texas, 48, is automatically entered into the Criteria Box) and click “Requery.”
 
 

The database now returns 188 records that correspond to all three sets of criteria.  To enter the final two sets of criteria, click the tab labeled “Track, Signal, and Train Descriptions; Motorist and Vehicle Info”.  In the “Type of Consist” Criteria Box, click “Freight Train”.
 
 

Click the tab labeled “Accident Circumstances, Hazmat, Casualties”, and in the “Primary Obstruction of Track View” Criteria Box, select “Vegetation” from the drop-down list box.
 
 

Click “Requery”, and the database returns two records, representing the only two accidents in the database that match all of the criteria you entered.  Click your mouse in any data field in the second record to make it the “Active Record” (displays an arrow to the left of the record as in Figure 2 above) and click “View Record”.  This displays the “Active Record” in full-screen format.

Occasionally, after you enter criteria and click the “Requery” button, the database will not return any records, as shown below:
 
 

This indicates that there are no records in the database that satisfy all of the criteria you entered.
 
 
 
 

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