In contrast, the problems coming from excessive FRA meddling – derailing-prone trains, steam-era train control, locomotives so heavy they demolish the cars behind them, trains that emphasize buff strength over crumple zones – have all led to large number of accident fatalities. Amagasaki and Eschede would have been equally deadly with US trains; Chatsworth would not have happened with Japanese trains.

I’m merelyh trying to point out the risk is there, that those accidents do happen. I don’t mean to speak to their likelihood. Unfortauntely some are obsessed with delving further and further into trite little points in order to avoid facing up to the absurdity of some of their claims that it becomes toiught to figure out what the point of it all is.

Accidents happen and the freight railroads know that it’s one thing to have to spend $200k to clean up some spilled grain and quite another to be dealing with having dead bodies to clean up.n It may not be a huge risk but for them, why would they want to take it in the first place? They stand to gain nearly nothing yet risk losing a lot if something were to go wrong.

That’d be no, not both. Not sure which crash in the UK you could be referring to with 100+ deaths. There’s not been one that big for more than half a century (list of UK rail accidents by death toll).

And for balance, as I grow so tired of sensationalised reporting of rail deaths in the media with them almost never putting it into the context of the daily carnage on our roads, and don’t want to repeat that behaviour, here’s a corresponding list of serious road accidents.

Second, many of the train accidents you’re talking about have nothing to do with freight trains. The Amagasaki accident did not involve a freight train; it involved a passenger train driver who exceeded the speed limit, something that automatic train control would’ve prevented if the line had had it. And the Eschede disaster was not about a freight train, either: the passenger train had a faulty part that failed at high speed, and crashed into a bridge. Neither would have been fixed by the concrete barriers CSX and UP are demanding.

And third, the US isn’t special just because its trains are longer. From the perspective of a passenger train, colliding with a 10,000-ton freight train and colliding with a 2,000-ton freight train are equally deadly. And while Western Europe and Japan do not have the same freight traffic as the US, they have more passenger trains to collide with derailed freight trains. Even though JR Freight runs trains on lines with a passenger train once every 9 minutes, it manages to avoid freight-on-passenger accidents.

Is their a source for that? Has some organization empirically measured the level of risk? If so, what countries did they use for “Europe”? Albania? Moldova? Bulgaria? Hungary? Portugal? Or was it the usual “Europe” that really means the rich western and northern European countries?

And what exactly is the point of comparing to Europe? Did they measure risk on lines that were carrying 30 – 60 freight trains a day? Did that empirical measurement of risk take into account 105 car coal unit trains? How about 142 car coal unit trains? How about ethanol trains that, if a derailment occurs, necessitate evacuation?

I’m asking because yes, technically derailments are preventable. In theory they could all be prevented. And over the last 30+ years, the number of them in the US has been reduced from about 6,500 per year to about 1,750 in a year. But around a 1/4 of those were due to human error. How do we ensure that that human error never happens? As for the other 3/4, how many of those are really preventable? What is the marginal change we’ll see by installing 20% more hot box detectors or doubling the number of rail inspection vehicles?

““Major derailments” where the trains actually fall over appear to be, effectively, completely preventable. They simply don’t happen in most of Europe or Japan.”- Nathaniel

Do you have a source for this claim? Are you saying that someone’s sabatoged wikipedia with the image of derailed locomotive in Austria ?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Off_the_Rails_%281%29.jpg/800px-Off_the_Rails_%281%29.jpg

Did the Hatfield disaster not happen in England and those people not die? The same with Grayrigg, so it did not happen? Did people not die in Oslo this spring with a freight train derailed? Did 100+ people not die in a passenger derailment in Osaka @ 6 years ago? Around the time the tech bubble was big but not looking like popping yet didn’t both Germany and England experience huge derailments where 100+ people died in each accident?

And is Greece not part of Europe?

http://www.safetynews.co.uk/March%202008.htm
Greece
Intercity derails near Larissa
An Athens – Salonica Intercity train with 174 passengers derailed near Larissa early on Saturday, 28 people, including 3 children, were injured, later in the day 5 were still hospitalised although none is in life-threatening condition. OSE (Helenic Railways Organisation) has speculated that human error or points failure may have caused the accident 225 miles north of Athens. 9th March 2008

So really, they don’t have accidents in Europe anymore? So people didn’t die in the explosion let alone this gas train never derailed and exploded? Is that what you’re saying?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1196457/Massive-blast-kills-13-people-derailed-gas-train-explodes-demolishing-trackside-houses.html

How about instead of making silly claims like “there is no risk” or “they don’t have dem dare deeerailments over in Your-Up” we take the time to find a source that will lay out what the assessed risks are or talk about number of derailments or other accidents per year? Would it be too much to ask to talk about facts instead of fiction????

Apparently the FRA is actually listening and may revise its rules. Some day.