-This year “Serbian Railways” celebrated June 9 – the International Level Crossing Awareness Day- by finishing securing process of 3 level crossings in Sabac with the most modern signaling and safety equipment. The Czech Development Agency donated €300 thousand equipment and the city of Sabac invested nearly €300 thousand in securing and construction works on level crossings. All works on level crossings are finished, the use permit obtaining process is still in progress and it is expected that they will be back in use in next few days- said Director General of “Serbian Railways”, Milovan Markovic, on the occasion of celebrating June 9 – the International Level Crossing Awareness Day- and pointed out, that the realization of this work was the best example to show how the rising of traffic safety to the highest level in cooperation with local self-government is possible.

Two out of three level crossings in Sabac have been already secured with road traffic signs (Andrejin Coss), one of them is completely new, and they were built as part of construction works on west traffic transversal in this city.

Thanks to donation of the Czech Development Agency, Serbian railways secured 4 level crossings last year with most modern equipment: “Atenica” on railway line Kraljevo-Cacak-Zablace, “Pavlovac” and “Capljinac” between Nis and Ristovac, and “Strazara 44” near Subotica. The Czechs provided modern equipment worth €1 million for securing 10 level crossings in Serbia, and the same amount will be provided by Railways for documentation, construction works and equipment installation. There is a plan to secure three more level crossings in Serbia with most modern equipment till the end of the year with financial assets from donation.

-The safety at level crossings will rise to the highest level within the modernization project of Serbian railways. In that way, 14 level crossings will be secured with most modern equipment during modernization of railway line Nis-Dimitrovgrad, 12 level crossings within planed modernization of railway line Pancevo-Vrsac, and on highway Stara Pazova-Novi Sad, which will be constructed with assets from European Investment Bank credit, 10 level crossings will be secured – commented Markovic.
He reminded, that there are 2.138 level crossings on Serbian railway lines and that all of them are properly secured, where fifth of them with most modern signaling and safety equipment and the rest of them with road traffic signs (Andrejin Coss, STOP sign).

According to statistical data of the expert services of “Serbian Railways”, the biggest number of extraordinary incidents occured not only due to negligence, lack of concentration and non-observance of the traffic signs, but also due to irresponsible and insolent behavior of participants in road traffic. At level crossings in 2010 occured 56 extraordinary incidents,where 15 persons were killed and 31 persons were injured. During the first five months this year, 18 extraordinary incidents at level crossings occured, 8 at level crossings with signalling and safety devices and 10 at level crossings with traffic signs, what means far less than last year in the same time. In this accidents 1 person was killed and 13 persons were injured. Only in two cases out of 194 extraordinary incidents at level crossings from 2008 till June 2011 “Serbian Railways” were responsible.
Due to the fact that traffic at level crossings represents a global problem, Intrnational Union of Railways started the level crossing safety campaign in cooperation with ILCAD organization, and last year “Serbian Railways” also joined this campaign.