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List of TGV accidents

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 25, 2025
Entity authorityQ2822744 ↗
Source-derived summary

TGV accidents are events involving TGV trains which have harmful consequences, such as injury to people or damage to trains, or derailments. High-speed rail is one of the safest modes of transportation; since service started in 1964, there have only been fatalities in high-speed operation in a 2015 derailment. Today TGV trains accumulate of the order of 50 billion passenger-kilometres per year on lignes à grande vitesse (high-speed lines) alone. 1.2 billion passengers have travelled on the TGV.

TGV operations fall into two categories: operations on dedicated, TGV-only high-speed lines (LGVs), and operation in mixed traffic on lignes classiques, conventional lines. Indeed, of the total track length served by TGV trains only about 25% (by route kilometre) is high-speed. In understanding the incident summaries below, it is important to bear this distinction in mind. Most of the serious incidents have occurred on conventional lines, where TGV trains are exposed to the same external risks as any other train. High-speed operation was never a factor in any fatal incident in the history of the TGV until November 14, 2015 when a TGV testing on the new Paris–Strasbourg line derailed violently into a canal, killing eleven and injuring the surviving 42 passengers.

Following the number of accidents at level crossings, an effort has been made to remove all level crossings on lignes classiques used by TGVs. The ligne classique from Tours to Bordeaux at the end of the LGV Atlantique has no level crossings as a result.

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The public source identifies “List of TGV accidents” as open-knowledge reference entry. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around List, accidents and Open-knowledge.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1964, 2015—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with List, accidents and Open-knowledge providing the first useful test.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2822744. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1964 and 2015.

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This entry incorporates text from “List of TGV accidents” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.