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All sorts of transportation are very fragile. Everyone with a driver's license is trusted with operating tons of steel that can move at enormous speeds. Societ

All sorts of transportation are very fragile. Everyone with a driver's license is trusted with operating tons of steel that can move at enormous speeds. Society's based on some amount of mutual trust. We can't lock everything down and treat every person as a potential criminal. That leads to an inefficient and dystopian country.

achow 6y ago
Well at the risk of sounding pedantic, things on rails - railways, metro/subway etc. are not in same category.
- masklinn 6y ago
  OTOH the fragility of the original comment was about wilfully disrupting transports. It's pretty easy to significantly distrust rail transportation. There are hundreds of rail suicides every year, and each and every time the line shuts down until everything's cleaned up. And of course you could destructively interfere with the train or railway, a rather common sabotage operation during WWII.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    I can't seem to find a source, I heard about a culture (maybe Japanese?) where suicide by train is rare because of the inconvenience it causes others and the shame that brings your family. When you go through the math on lost productivity due to train delays, you get some interesting conclusions. If a commuter train has 1,000 passengers making an average of $50 per hour who are, a delay is $833 per minute. That means it's more efficient (not going to touch on ethics or legality) to make minimal accommodations for disabled passengers and provide them point-to-point car service, instead.
    - liability 6y ago
      According to wikipedia, suicide by train is common in Japan. In an effort to suppress this, life insurance policies often refuse to pay out for suicide by train and surviving family members may be fined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Rail
      - ascar 6y ago
        Japanese train stations also have soothing blue lights to prevent suicide and specially created jingles that are supposed to calm people down. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-22/the-amazing-psychology-of-japanese-train-stations https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-22/the-amazi...
- bagacrap 6y ago
  they aren't easy to derail? aren't wet leaves enough to cause issues?
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    Issues with braking, not derailment.
    - jayd16 6y ago
      How about wet leaves before a turn?
- pjc50 6y ago
  Wasn't there a guy who crashed the train he was driving because he'd been radicalised by Q nonsense?
  - kens 6y ago
    Yes, a train engineer at the Port of Los Angeles intentionlly crashed his train in April because he was suspicious of the nearby Navy hospital ship Mercy. '“You only get this chance once. The whole world is watching. I had to," Moreno told investigators, according to the complaint. "People don’t know what’s going on here. Now they will.”' (Nothing about this story makes sense to me.) https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/04/02/train-engineer-intentionally-derails-locomotive-near-hospital-ship-says-usns-mercy-was-suspicious/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/04/02/trai...
    - _underfl0w_ 6y ago
      He must've been hoping the earth was flat enough that he could drive the train across water or something. Simultaneously amazing and terrifying that he could be put in charge of something so deadly despite what I'm sure is obvious mental instability.
  - TigeriusKirk 6y ago
    Back in the 90s a domestic terrorist derailed an Amtrak train in Arizona. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/best-reads/2015/10/10/amtrak-train-derailment-sunset-limited-arizona-1995/73604602/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/best-reads/2015/1...
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  On the contrary, you need to defend the entire length of the track at all times from an enemy who can destroy any small part of it at any time and then just leave the scene to try again later. Yes, it takes much more effort than a driver just deciding to go on a rampage, but against a determined adversary the train is at a huge disadvantage.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Derailing a train is an ordeal, though, and it's fairly easy to surveil against it. I'm fairly certain just blowing up the locomotive is less effort against modern networked rails.
    - solarkraft 6y ago
      Anecdote time: I was in a train that hit a bunch of concrete slabs at medium speed (60 km/h?) and all I noticed was that it rapidly stopped. But that was a relatively undetermined attack. What if someone welds something directly on to the rails or cuts something out? It may get noticed in tens of minutes, but is that really fast enough? Similarly it seems like it wouldn't be insanely hard to poison water supplies, doing some damage before it gets shut off or destroy other bits of infrastructure (I hear it has been tried with the electricity grid). Society is a fairly complex machine and I'm surprised how well it works.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        Cutting out the rail is unlikely to cause huge damage, and welding something directly to the rail would take quite some time and be noticeable. Just putting a few sensors every few meters and networking them then stopping the train would work. But I am also surprised how well it works. I think people just don't suck as much as one would expect.
        jimktrains2 6y ago
        Cutting the rail would also break the track circuit and force signals to red.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  That chap tried to hit the USNS Mercy Hospital Ship with his cargo locomotive because he thought it was a human experimentation ship https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/04/02/train-engineer-intentionally-derails-locomotive-near-hospital-ship-says-usns-mercy-was-suspicious/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/04/02/trai... Would have been top news if it weren't for the fact that America was reeling from an explosion of cases in the COVID19 pandemic.
  - evan_ 6y ago
    texting while driving is also a concern for train engineers: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-train-crash/train-engineer-was-texting-just-before-california-crash-idUSN0152835520081002 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-train-crash/train-eng...
chrischen 6y ago
> Everyone with a driver's license is trusted with operating tons of steel that can move at enormous speeds. That's why you have to pay for insurance (in most places at least) so that you are pre-paying for your liability.
- avhon1 6y ago
  I mean, you're supposed to, and you'll get in trouble if you're caught driving without valid insurance. However, there isn't anything physically stopping people from driving irresponsibly.
  - toomanyrichies 6y ago
    > there isn't anything physically stopping people from driving irresponsibly. Having recently driven on South Florida freeways, I can vouch for this statement.
    - chrischen 6y ago
      Yes but you can also drive without a license at all in the same way.
mrpopo 6y ago
If you have ever cycled on a national road, you know that this "mutual trust" fades away rather quickly in favor of "I can save 1 min and probably will avoid killing this guy if I accelerate right now".
- denkmoon 6y ago
  Mutually assured destruction, more than mutual trust.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Cyclists need not be involved. Just this morning on my way in to work I watched an SUV overtake me, decide they also needed to pass the guy in front of me, and accelerate up a hill in the wrong lane, not coming back into the correct lane until after cresting it. I later passed them as they waited to turn right at the next stoplight. People are just crazy stupid sometimes.

achow 6y ago

Well at the risk of sounding pedantic, things on rails - railways, metro/subway etc. are not in same category.

masklinn 6y ago
OTOH the fragility of the original comment was about wilfully disrupting transports. It's pretty easy to significantly distrust rail transportation. There are hundreds of rail suicides every year, and each and every time the line shuts down until everything's cleaned up. And of course you could destructively interfere with the train or railway, a rather common sabotage operation during WWII.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  I can't seem to find a source, I heard about a culture (maybe Japanese?) where suicide by train is rare because of the inconvenience it causes others and the shame that brings your family. When you go through the math on lost productivity due to train delays, you get some interesting conclusions. If a commuter train has 1,000 passengers making an average of $50 per hour who are, a delay is $833 per minute. That means it's more efficient (not going to touch on ethics or legality) to make minimal accommodations for disabled passengers and provide them point-to-point car service, instead.
  - liability 6y ago
    According to wikipedia, suicide by train is common in Japan. In an effort to suppress this, life insurance policies often refuse to pay out for suicide by train and surviving family members may be fined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Rail
    - ascar 6y ago
      Japanese train stations also have soothing blue lights to prevent suicide and specially created jingles that are supposed to calm people down. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-22/the-amazing-psychology-of-japanese-train-stations https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-22/the-amazi...
bagacrap 6y ago
they aren't easy to derail? aren't wet leaves enough to cause issues?
- solarkraft 6y ago
  Issues with braking, not derailment.
  - jayd16 6y ago
    How about wet leaves before a turn?
pjc50 6y ago
Wasn't there a guy who crashed the train he was driving because he'd been radicalised by Q nonsense?
- kens 6y ago
  Yes, a train engineer at the Port of Los Angeles intentionlly crashed his train in April because he was suspicious of the nearby Navy hospital ship Mercy. '“You only get this chance once. The whole world is watching. I had to," Moreno told investigators, according to the complaint. "People don’t know what’s going on here. Now they will.”' (Nothing about this story makes sense to me.) https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/04/02/train-engineer-intentionally-derails-locomotive-near-hospital-ship-says-usns-mercy-was-suspicious/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/04/02/trai...
  - _underfl0w_ 6y ago
    He must've been hoping the earth was flat enough that he could drive the train across water or something. Simultaneously amazing and terrifying that he could be put in charge of something so deadly despite what I'm sure is obvious mental instability.
- TigeriusKirk 6y ago
  Back in the 90s a domestic terrorist derailed an Amtrak train in Arizona. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/best-reads/2015/10/10/amtrak-train-derailment-sunset-limited-arizona-1995/73604602/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/best-reads/2015/1...
CobrastanJorji 6y ago
On the contrary, you need to defend the entire length of the track at all times from an enemy who can destroy any small part of it at any time and then just leave the scene to try again later. Yes, it takes much more effort than a driver just deciding to go on a rampage, but against a determined adversary the train is at a huge disadvantage.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Derailing a train is an ordeal, though, and it's fairly easy to surveil against it. I'm fairly certain just blowing up the locomotive is less effort against modern networked rails.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    Anecdote time: I was in a train that hit a bunch of concrete slabs at medium speed (60 km/h?) and all I noticed was that it rapidly stopped. But that was a relatively undetermined attack. What if someone welds something directly on to the rails or cuts something out? It may get noticed in tens of minutes, but is that really fast enough? Similarly it seems like it wouldn't be insanely hard to poison water supplies, doing some damage before it gets shut off or destroy other bits of infrastructure (I hear it has been tried with the electricity grid). Society is a fairly complex machine and I'm surprised how well it works.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Cutting out the rail is unlikely to cause huge damage, and welding something directly to the rail would take quite some time and be noticeable. Just putting a few sensors every few meters and networking them then stopping the train would work. But I am also surprised how well it works. I think people just don't suck as much as one would expect.
      - jimktrains2 6y ago
        Cutting the rail would also break the track circuit and force signals to red.
renewiltord 6y ago
That chap tried to hit the USNS Mercy Hospital Ship with his cargo locomotive because he thought it was a human experimentation ship https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/04/02/train-engineer-intentionally-derails-locomotive-near-hospital-ship-says-usns-mercy-was-suspicious/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/04/02/trai... Would have been top news if it weren't for the fact that America was reeling from an explosion of cases in the COVID19 pandemic.
- evan_ 6y ago
  texting while driving is also a concern for train engineers: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-train-crash/train-engineer-was-texting-just-before-california-crash-idUSN0152835520081002 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-train-crash/train-eng...

chrischen 6y ago

> Everyone with a driver's license is trusted with operating tons of steel that can move at enormous speeds. That's why you have to pay for insurance (in most places at least) so that you are pre-paying for your liability.

avhon1 6y ago
I mean, you're supposed to, and you'll get in trouble if you're caught driving without valid insurance. However, there isn't anything physically stopping people from driving irresponsibly.
- toomanyrichies 6y ago
  > there isn't anything physically stopping people from driving irresponsibly. Having recently driven on South Florida freeways, I can vouch for this statement.
  - chrischen 6y ago
    Yes but you can also drive without a license at all in the same way.

mrpopo 6y ago

If you have ever cycled on a national road, you know that this "mutual trust" fades away rather quickly in favor of "I can save 1 min and probably will avoid killing this guy if I accelerate right now".

denkmoon 6y ago
Mutually assured destruction, more than mutual trust.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Cyclists need not be involved. Just this morning on my way in to work I watched an SUV overtake me, decide they also needed to pass the guy in front of me, and accelerate up a hill in the wrong lane, not coming back into the correct lane until after cresting it. I later passed them as they waited to turn right at the next stoplight. People are just crazy stupid sometimes.