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I came in here to vent about how unsafe our rail systems are. However, our deaths per passenger-mile are well below the EU average, and we're safer than all ex

I came in here to vent about how unsafe our rail systems are. However, our deaths per passenger-mile are well below the EU average, and we're safer than all except UK, Denmark, and Netherlands: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jul/25/how-safe-are-europe-railways https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jul/25/how-sa... Still, this wreck is sad, and also embarrassing. Our rail system is just not a meaningful transportation network, and is such a missed opportunity. Even small efforts at improving it seem to end in failure, or even disaster.

niftich 9y ago
Reading transportation fatality statistics requires some nuance. In the realm of railways, most fatalities tend to be suicides causing no additional deaths, which are often analyzed separately. The EU does this [1], while the Guardian article only raises this distinction halfway through. Once you exclude suicides, there are several other categories that are useful to distinguish: collisions (e.g. between two trains), derailments, accidents at road-crossings, and 'accidents to persons caused by rolling stock in motion' [2]. The share of accidents by category will tell you a lot about a particular country's issues; a relatively large amount of level crossing accidents may suggest that not enough of the rail network may be grade separated (e.g. Poland, Hungary, Romania), while a high share (and absolute number) of collisions or derailments would be a serious cause for alarm. Also consider this 2012 post [3] which compares collisions and derailments per usage by country between Europe and the US, originally written as a response to that 2011 article. [1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Rail_accident_fatalities_in_the_EU http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?... [2] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Accidents_to_persons_caused_by_rolling_stock_in_motion http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/... [3] http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-and-european-rail-safety.html http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-and-european-rail-...
- jdonaldson 9y ago
  Great details, thanks.

niftich 9y ago

Reading transportation fatality statistics requires some nuance. In the realm of railways, most fatalities tend to be suicides causing no additional deaths, which are often analyzed separately. The EU does this [1], while the Guardian article only raises this distinction halfway through. Once you exclude suicides, there are several other categories that are useful to distinguish: collisions (e.g. between two trains), derailments, accidents at road-crossings, and 'accidents to persons caused by rolling stock in motion' [2]. The share of accidents by category will tell you a lot about a particular country's issues; a relatively large amount of level crossing accidents may suggest that not enough of the rail network may be grade separated (e.g. Poland, Hungary, Romania), while a high share (and absolute number) of collisions or derailments would be a serious cause for alarm. Also consider this 2012 post [3] which compares collisions and derailments per usage by country between Europe and the US, originally written as a response to that 2011 article. [1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Rail_accident_fatalities_in_the_EU http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?... [2] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Accidents_to_persons_caused_by_rolling_stock_in_motion http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/... [3] http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-and-european-rail-safety.html http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-and-european-rail-...

jdonaldson 9y ago
Great details, thanks.