Rail Track Safety Personnel

The Test Solutions “Rail Track Safety Personnel” and “Rail Track Safety Personnel – Retesting” serve for aptitude testing of personnel working in the track area who are responsible either for the planning, coordination and supervision of track works or for the operational safeguarding and monitoring of the track section.

While binding minimum requirements for psychological fitness exist for train drivers under EU Directive 2007/59/EC and several concrete standards are established internationally, the requirements for safety personnel in the track area are considerably less explicit at the international level. The EU Directive merely states that the psychological basic principles defined for train drivers may serve as guidance for other safety-relevant activities in rail transport (see Train Drivers). International regulations such as the Australian National Standard for Health Assessment of Rail Safety Workers or the Canadian Railway Medical Rules for Positions Critical to Safe Railway Operations prescribe standardized, safety-related selection of safety-relevant personnel, but do not specify concrete psychometric ability or personality requirements.

Germany represents a special case in this context: In addition to the general DGUV regulation 77/78 Arbeiten im Bereich von Gleisen (UVB, 2025), a concrete recommendation for aptitude testing of track area safety personnel was already published in 1994 by the Research Society for Applied System Safety and Occupational Medicine (FSA). This publication demonstrated that both supervisory and operational personnel in track safety are highly relevant for the prevention of accidents in the track area (Müller, 1994). Empirical evidence regarding validity and occupational requirements for safety personnel in the track area was recently re-examined by the FSA (Manteuffel & Kutschbach, 2020). Together with earlier requirements analyses and recommendations for the aptitude assessment of rail track safety personnel, these findings form the conceptual basis for the selection of the diagnostic dimensions included in the Test Solutions “Rail Track Safety Personnel” and “Rail Track Safety Personnel – Reassessment”. Due to the lack of international research, the use of these Test Solutions for similar occupational groups beyond the German national context is recommended by the authors of this document as evidence-based procedures for aptitude testing of safety-relevant personnel in the track area.

Currently, the findings of the recent FSA study are reflected in the assessment of rail track safety personnel insofar as additional job-relevant personality and attitudinal factors are now recommended to be assessed by means of a psychological interview. With regard to cognitive performance dimensions, current Deutsche Bahn requirements specify that the following ability areas must be assessed during an initial examination prior to commencing the activity: concentration, sustained attention, vigilance, divided attention, responsiveness, memory, and logical reasoning. Reassessments of rail track safety personnel are to be conducted at intervals of five years during ongoing employment and every two years from the age of 62 onwards. Reassessments must include, at a minimum, concentration, sustained attention, vigilance, and responsiveness, although additional dimensions may be added depending on the purpose of the assessment.

The Test Solutions “Rail Track Safety Personnel” and “Rail Track Safety Personnel – Retesting” therefore comprise the following dimensions:

Rail Track Safety Personnel

• Ability to concentrate (TACO-S2)

• Sustained attention (TACO-S4)

• Vigilance (VIGIL-S1)

• Reaction speed and motor speed (RT-S3)

• Divided attention (TACO-S6)

• Long-term memory (INT-S2)

• Logical reasoning (INT-S2)

Rail Track Safety Personnel – Retesting

• Ability to concentrate (TACO-S1)

• Sustained attention (TACO-S3)

• Vigilance (VIGIL-S1)

• Reaction speed and motor speed (RT-S3)

Aptitude assessment is not based on a cross-dimensional weighting procedure but follows the minimum requirements specified by Deutsche Bahn. This approach reflects the safety-critical nature of the activity, where deficits in individual central performance areas should not be compensated by strengths in other areas. For all cognitive performance dimensions (except vigilance), a minimum percentile rank of 16, corresponding to a low average level of performance, is required. This threshold reflects a convention established in traffic psychology for distinguishing below-average performance and is based on defining the below-average range as a deviation of more than one standard deviation from the mean of the norm sample. For vigilance, an increased minimum threshold of percentile rank 33 is applied in accordance with the requirements profile (cf. Müller, 1994; Manteuffel & Kutschbach, 2020). The overall assessment is based on fulfillment of the minimum requirements in the individual dimensions as well as on a professional psychological interpretation of the overall result profile.

In individual cases, it may be necessary to reassess specific performance areas as part of an additional diagnostic clarification. For this purpose, parallel test forms or alternative procedures assessing the same diagnostic dimension may be used, such as the assessment of vigilance using WAFV-S2, sustained attention using TACO-S3 or WAFV-S6, or logical reasoning using BMT-S1. The selection of appropriate procedures is the responsibility of the administering psychologist and should take into account the specific assessment context and purpose. Please note that when configuring custom test sequences and adding tests that are not part of the SCHUHFRIED Selection, the integrated results overview is no longer available automatically (see Notes on evaluation and interpretation).

The test duration is approximately 116 minutes for the Test Solution “Rail Track Safety Personnel” and approximately 74 minutes for the Test Solution “Rail Track Safety Personnel – Reassessment”.

References can be found here: Literature