I think if we compare deaths / passenger miles driven between cars and trains. Trains come out very favorably. Possibly only beaten by airplanes.

Edit: Numbers

In the US

> Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 9 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 1,606 times higher than for scheduled airlines

That sounded rather high for trains (dunno what the US is doing wrong), so I checked some other country.

In the UK:

> Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per billion passenger kilometers was over 5 times higher than for buses, 1100 times higher than for scheduled airliners, and an infinity higher than for passenger trains (no deaths were reported).

Deaths/billion passenger-km Car 1.1 Van 0.4 Water 0.4 Bus or coach 0.2 Air 0.01 Rail* 0

In general of the already almost negligible death rate, it seems that rail deaths are mostly people at rail crossings, and maintenance personnel, not passengers.