Cause analysis and countermeasures of locomotive runaway accident based on fault tree analysis method

August 12, 2011, a locomotive runaway has happened on the local railway named Xihe railway of a certain city, it led to a death of an older person and serious damage of four automobiles. The causing factors of the runaway accident have been comprehensively analyzed, which respectively include four aspects: human, machine, environment and management. By using the principle of fault tree analysis (FTA), the locomotive runaway accident fault tree has been set up after the accident investigation. Based on the corresponding formula, the authors have calculated the structure importance coefficient of each basic event. By analyzing the causation of the events, the minimal path sets have been obtained, and the order of the structure importance has also been obtained. Through the above analysis, the reasons of this accident have been analyzed systematically and the corresponding safety countermeasures have been proposed. The thesis can provide reference for prevention of similar accidents. (C) 2012 Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.