Rail companies are creating unnecessary risks when transporting dangerous substances, according to a Dutch safety council report on a train crash in Tilburg last year.

In that incident, a goods train transporting a flammable liquid collided with a passenger train. The investigators said the accident happened because the rail firms had considered logistics and money to be more important than taking proper safety precautions.

Several passengers and the conductor were injured in the crash. Although the impact was limited, such accidents could have extremely serious consequences, the council is quoted as saying by RTL news.

The goods train had left three hours later than planned and was longer than had been officially registered which had an important impact on the way the emergency signalling worked, the council said. Nor should the goods train itself have been carrying dangerous substances in the last truck as an added precaution.

In addition, the passenger train was an old type with no buffers which would have stopped it from going up into the air at the point of impact, the council said.