“We will meet again F*** D* ****”. “Do you find it violent? U.S. too “. Here are the kind of messages that can be read in stations and on board SNCF trains, as part of the new campaign launched by the railway group. Faced with the surge in physical and verbal violence against its agents in 2022, the SNCF wants to “call for respect on the trains”.
In 2021, “5,330 acts of verbal or physical violence, i.e. 14 acts per day” were committed against an SNCF agent, the group identified. Among all its incidents, 900 gave rise to a declaration of accident at work. Worse, over the first six months of 2022, the phenomenon is up 9% compared to 2021, details the press release from SNCF Voyageurs.
Body cameras and app for controllers
Admittedly, travelers have returned massively to the trains after a year 2021 marked by containment and curfew measures until June, but we notice “that a tension is setting in” since the beginning of 2022, notes Patrick Auvrèle, safety director of SNCF Voyageurs. “The feedback from our agents made us say that we had to bring the knowledge of these events to the general public,” he added.
Attacks take place “over the whole territory and on all categories of train”, indicates Patrick Auvrèle. The positions most exposed to aggression and incivility are those facing the public directly, such as control officers or sales and information areas in stations. Over the past year, SNCF has implemented several systems to support its agents in the field.
About 2,000 body cameras have been distributed to volunteers since the end of last year. “If during an exchange with a customer it goes wrong, then the agent can warn him and press a button to film and record the conversation”, explains the security director of SNCF Voyageurs, welcoming “very positive feedback” on experimentation having “a soothing virtue”. The controllers also have a “security application” on their smartphone since September 2021 which allows them to launch an alert by shaking the phone for example in order to trigger remote listening or an intervention.