Recent Topics on Human Science for Railways

The Human Science Division of the Railway Technical Research Institute in Japan, has been conducting research on prevention of human error and occupational accidents as well as into countermeasures for transport disruptions and ways to improve user environments in order to improve the safety, convenience and comfort of passengers using the railways. This paper outlines the recent accomplishments of the representative research on prevention of human error accidents and improvement of user environments. RTRI is conducting R & D with the aim of improving railway safety, reducing maintenance costs, and improving rail services by introducing higher running speeds. Approximately half of all R & D for vehicles is concentrated on safety, mainly focusing on research on running safety evaluation methods such as flange climb derailment and crashworthiness evaluation. To improve the quality of railway services for passengers, other research and development aims to improve ride comfort by reducing vibration, developing tilting technology and noise reduction. This paper gives an overview of current research and development being conducted in the Vehicle Structure Technology Division, the status of crashworthiness evaluation, and of work to improve ride comfort.