Is it? Most, if not all, of the rail I've seen in Europe is either grade separated or access restricted in some manner. The UK in particular stands out to me.
Brightrail runs 130 kph trains through populated areas, mostly at grade including crossings. Caltrain runs a comparable system in length and speed and sees roughly half the annual deaths. Do you have a better explanation?
I think you have to differentiate. At least in germany, most rail is not fenced off and when we do, we do not use fences but instead sound barriers. I think faster rail is usually behind sound barriers in populated ares, and slower commuter rail is often not fenced off. We do not have many at-grade crossings in more populated areas though, they are really only present on the country-side so I think the rail-infrastructure is not that "present". Nobody really walks or drives over rails usually and it's usually naturally separated, so you can't enter tracks by accident and therefore accidents are quite rare.
