re edit: TL;DR: Unable. This is the usual pitfall when troubleshooting a highly reliable system: any uncaught exception is going to be an outlier, almost by def

re edit: TL;DR: Unable. This is the usual pitfall when troubleshooting a highly reliable system: any uncaught exception is going to be an outlier, almost by definition. Given the millions of km travelled, one collision in 2 years on the whole continent means "insufficient data to draw conclusions." The only thing that follows is "can't generalize from that." Whether it's a lot or not is completely essential to drawing generalizations: with 5 data points (which I have honestly picked out of Wikipedia under the assumption that such an event is unlikely not to be mentioned - that's a lot of filters right there), what you're saying is equivalent to "there has now been a single confirmed death by meteorite; let's generalize!" (Tangent follows: Europe (or even the EU) does not have a homogeneous rail network, with the same standards kept everywhere: each country keeps its own set (albeit loosely compatible) of standards and its own overseeing agency; that translates to very different quality of track, service, security etc. The only thing that's common is "the overwhelming majority of track is of the 1435 mm gauge" - there are even countries with four(!) different electric power systems on the same network. (Also translates to a certification nightmare for cross-border trains.) Moreover, there are various levels of rail: there's the (sparse) TEN-T backbone, national major routes, regional networks, and local lines; although those are interconnected, there are varying levels of safeties, from the (interoperable) ETCS, through various local (automated and semi-automated) block signalling, PTT radio dispatching and manual signal operation, all the way down to 1890s-style train handover by telephone signalling. (No idea which of these is used on this specific line.) )