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Does that mean trains are more dangerous than cars? It seems that way, I just wonder if I'm missing something.
by Judgmentality 9y ago
Does that mean trains are more dangerous than cars? It seems that way, I just wonder if I'm missing something.
- waqf 9y agoLooking at the BTS statistics: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_01.html_mfd https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu... you can see that 95% of railroad fatalities are classified as either "Trespassers" or "Highway–rail grade crossing". In both of those cases it seems likely that the victims are generally not actually passengers on the train, but rather are people doing something obviously dangerous near railroad tracks. (Also the denominator wasn't clear for the quoted statistic: is it per passenger-mile, or per vehicle-mile? In any case here is a sensible denominator: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_40.html. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...)
- abainbridge 9y agoIt's hard to tell. 1. I can't find the 11.3 billion statistic on the Wikipedia page. 2. The stats seem to be per vehicle mile. An average train carries maybe 100 times as many people as a car. If the people on the train were driving cars there'd be 100 times more vehicle miles. 3. Are people who commit suicide by jumping in front of a train counted in the statistics? It seems that if there were no trains, some of those people would find an alternative, so it might be unfair to include them.