New railway law brings safety risks

In the shunting there are people between the trains. At Vienna's main railway station alone, there are up to 3,500 shunting trips a day, he underlines the potential danger. Railway companies should also be able to issue their own regulations. The "already lacking control" will thus become completely impossible, according to Hebenstreit.

Training & Safety

Hebenstreit identified poor personnel planning at ÖBB and in the economy in general. Apprenticeship training at ÖBB declined between 2019 and 2022. At the same time, the company has "definitely known for many years - at least since 2016" how the personnel situation will develop due to the baby boomer years. Now they want to use under-20s as train drivers "in order to be able to recruit more broadly," said Hebenstreit, who is himself a trained train driver. 

21 years "already a compromise"

"The human brain is immature longer than that of any other living being," explained psychiatrist Michael Lehofer at the vida press conference. It is only "finished between the ages of 20 and 25". Certain functions with high responsibility should be better performed by more mature adults, said the university professor. Independent locomotive journeys, as is now the case from the age of 21, are therefore "already a compromise".

Personalities who have not yet fully matured have "a penchant for risk," Hebenstreit continued. Young people cannot be blamed for this, but it is obviously ignored by the railway. "As far as we could research, we are nowhere under 20 years old," Hebenstreit said when asked about the standards in other European countries. "I don't want to go down to the lowest European level," he stressed. "What Austria is doing there is negligent." The trade unionist also sees the fact that the ÖBB recently recruited 15 workers from Tunisia and wants to bring in more workers from third countries as a security risk due to possible language barriers.

"Intentionally dangerous"

The planned amendment to the Railway Act by Leonore Gewessler's (Greens) Ministry of Transport also provides that railway companies will be able to issue their own regulations in the future and decide for themselves how they train their employees, Hebenstreit reported. This will lead to a neglect of education. Until now, ÖBB has always had to submit its regulations for approval. Now this permit requirement is to be abolished. This is "intentionally dangerous," said Hebenstreit. Both for this and for the lowering of the entry age for the train driver profession, there is no compulsion from the EU, he stressed.