Press Releases(Archive)
FY2012 - FY2003

Creation of "2013 Safety Vision" — the 5th 5-year Safety Plan

East Japan Railway Company

March 3, 2009

East Japan Railway Company has formulated its 5th 5-year safety plan under the title 2013 Safety Vision: Tackling the Safety Issue - Think and Act for Yourself. This plan will go into effect beginning in fiscal year 2009.

The 2013 Safety Vision target is zero accidents involving passenger injuries or fatalities and zero accidents involving employee fatalities (including employees of Group companies and partner companies). In addition to continuing to promote the measures we have implemented to date, we will take on the challenge of pursuing extreme safety levels, supported by four pillars: creating a culture of safety, rebuilding the safety management system, taking sure steps to reduce risks, and promoting priority improvement plans for safety equipment. We will approach this challenge from the twin perspectives of safety-related human resource development and system improvement, and not just working to prevent the recurrence of accidents after an accident has already happened, but also evaluating possible risks to prevent accidents before they occur. Our safety-related investments over the 5-year period are expected to amount to approximately 750 billion yen.

The various measures implemented in the previous four 5-year safety plans and other such initiatives have reduced the occurrence of railway accidents. On December 25, 2005, however, five passengers lost their lives in a train accident on the Uetsu Line, an indication that serious accidents continue to occur.

We are keenly aware of these circumstances, and have formulated the new 5-year safety plan, the "2013 Safety Vision" (fiscal years 2009 - 2013), to address the challenge of meeting "extreme safety levels" by the means described below. These include proceeding with the assured implementation of measures we have put in place to date while also addressing the progress in systemization and the shift between generations. We are further adopting perspectives for dealing with the increase in operations conducted with Group companies and partner companies and other such changes in our environment.

1. Two Perspectives Given Particular Priority in the "2013 Safety Vision"


Safety-related human resource development and system improvement

We will renew our efforts to develop human resources involved in safety matters in light of the rapidity of shifts between generations and related matters. Specifically, we will pursue our plans to develop personnel for JR East branch offices and other such establishments to be known as "safety professionals", and for operational bodies and other such establishments, personnel to be known as the "key safety leaders". These personnel will serve as the core of our safety programs. We also intend to revitalize the Challenge Safety Campaign, a program that JR East has been conducting since 1988 to increase safety awareness and sensitivity. We will also work to improve safety promotion frameworks for the Group as a whole, for instance by supporting safety frameworks in Group companies and other such organizations.


Not just working to prevent the recurrence of accidents after an accident has already happened, but also evaluating possible risks to prevent accidents before they occur

In addition to countermeasures to prevent the recurrence of railway accidents and other incidents that have occurred in the past, we intend to use new methods to evaluate risks in advance in an attempt to prevent accidents before they happen. Specifically, we will estimate the scale of damage caused by certain events and the frequency with which they occur, such as major earthquakes occurring directly below the Tokyo metropolitan area, and prioritize countermeasures for damage prevention based on those evaluations.



2. The Four Pillars of  "2013 Safety Vision"


Creating a culture of safety

(1) 
We consider the overall culture of safety to be composed of five sub-cultures: the culture of proper reporting, the culture of noticing, the culture of direct confrontation and debate, the culture of learning, and the culture of action.
(2) 
The standard for action in the JR East Group is established as the "three actualities principle" (actual locations, actual objects, actual people). We will put into practice this approach, by which we look at things with our own eyes, listen to things with our own ears, feel things with our own senses, and then think for ourselves.
(3) 
We will return to the basic ideas of the Challenge Safety Campaign (campaign to raise safety awareness among employees), and revitalize it. This campaign seeks to encourage employees to think about safety, to argue about safety, to act to increase safety and to feel a sense of achievement over safety, and to channel that enhanced safety consciousness into further action.


Rebuilding the safety management system

We will pursue the following measures to promote safety in the JR East Group:

(1)  We will nurture our people and pass on our knowledge of safety.
We will nurture "safety professionals" who have leadership ability and a thorough knowledge of safety rules, security arrangements, past accident records, and other such matters in branch offices and other such establishments. In JR East operational bodies and other such establishments, we will nurture people to be "key safety leaders". These personnel will be thoroughly knowledgeable about weak areas and related matters, will have leadership ability, and will take on the task of training their successors.
We will expand the Accident History Exhibition Hall, located in the JR East General Education Center. We will also create new training materials and promote the organization of our chroniclers and narrators of oral history and lore about safety.
(2)  The Group will join together as one in measures to upgrade safety.
We will also provide support to the safety divisions in Group companies, partner companies, and other such organizations, and will make arrangements to improve equipment, facilities and training for personnel. We are further committed to eliminating the three major work-related accidents, which are accidents involving contact with rolling stock, electrocution, and falls.


Taking sure steps to reduce risks

We intend to devote more resources than before to countermeasures for preventing the recurrence of railway accidents and other such incidents that have occurred in the past. At the same time, we will promote countermeasures to prevent damage by estimating the maximum scale of damage from accidents and incidents with a certain frequency of occurrence and addressing them in the order of highest priority.

(1)  We will identify and evaluate new risks.
We will evaluate risks based on our estimation of the frequency of occurrence and estimation of damage in the event of occurrence.
We will assign priority to countermeasures according to the evaluation of risk.
(2)  We will promote countermeasures that have the highest priority.
Specifically, we will promote countermeasures for major earthquakes in the Tokyo metropolitan area, railway crossing accidents, excessive train speeds, low-speed wheel-climb derailments, and other such accidents. We will further engage in countermeasures for accidents at station platforms, such as promoting the installation of automatic platform gates, in order to improve safety.
(3)  We will further maintain countermeasures against major accidents.
We will continue to pursue countermeasures to prevent major accidents of the kinds that have occurred in recent years (the Uetsu Line accident, the Fukuchiyama Line derailment accident, and the Joetsu Shinkansen derailment accident).


Promoting priority improvement plans for safety equipment

The safety-related investments for the last four 5-year safety plans amounted to 400 billion yen for each plan. For the "2013 Safety Vision", however, we anticipate an investment of approximately 750 billion yen.
The major items are as follows:

We intend to give prompt consideration to the improvement of test tracks in the interest of investigations to ascertain accident causes and the formulation of countermeasures.
We intend to study and implement concrete countermeasures for major earthquakes in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
We intend to introduce automatic platform gates on the Yamanote Line.
To help prevent railway crossing accidents, we will steadily implement the measures adopted to date. In addition, we will implement new countermeasures against secondary damage, and will study new ways to prevent attempts to cross tracks immediately before a train passes through.
We intend to continue promoting the improvement of safety equipment providing higher levels of safety (ATS-P and ATS-Ps systems* ).
 
 
Safety equipment that calculates the permissible speed using on-board equipment based on information from ground equipment, and automatically operates the brakes when the train exceeds this speed
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