Objectives:
The aim of the article is to demonstrate the impact of passenger rail transport on road traffic security, taking into account the Covid-19 pandemic.

Material and methods:
A solution to the research problem was sought by examining, using multivariate comparative analyses, the deviations in the length of rail lines and the number of passengers transported by rail during a selected period in six selected European countries, taking into account the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic and the analysis of the number of fatalities in road accidents. The study used multivariate comparative analyses of data on the rail passenger transport sector. The research period covered the years 2010-2023.

Results:
The study shows that three of the six European countries analyzed (Poland, Spain and Italy) have seen significant increases in the length of rail lines since 2021, and the other three countries have seen declines. Analyzing the second group of dependent variables, it was observed that in 2020, due to the pandemic, there were huge declines in the passenger rail transport sector in each of the analyzed countries. After the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of passenger rail capacity continued to varying degrees in each country, with significant increases in most of them by 2023. However, the mortality rate between 2020 and 2023 remained significantly lower than before the pandemic.

Conclusions:
The passenger rail transport has an impact on road safety, but as the analyzed data shows, the dynamics of its use does not explain the significant decrease in fatalities in the countries studied, and the clear upward trend in the use of this mode of transport does not coincide with the dynamics of fatalities. Therefore, it can be concluded that passenger rail transport does not have a significant impact on reducing road fatalities.