PRT Safety

Personal Rapid Transit systems have one-way guideways. Vehicles needing to change direction take a guideway, diverging away from the one they are on, and merge with a guideway going in the desired direction. The only accidents that are possible are rear-ending situations or side-on collisions with vehicles going in essentially the same direction.

Since vehicles bypass all stations, except for the destination station, the trip is non-stop and the maximum speed is close to the average speed. This is not the case for other systems that have to stop at each station. A light rail train system with stations a mile apart must have a top speed around 55mph in order to average 25mph. A Personal Rapid Transit system in the same situation needs to only have a top speed around 30mph to average 25mph. This makes PRT inherently safer.

None of the five ATN systems presently in public operation has ever had an injury accident. The Morgantown PRT system has completed over 140 million serious injury-free passenger miles. This record is remarkable when one considers that conventional transit would have injured over one hundred people and probably killed somebody in this many passenger miles. The Morgantown data indicates that PRT can be at least an order of magnitude safer than other forms of surface transportation.