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Also transportation sec Buttigieg just casually saying not to worry we have over 1,000 train derailments a year: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-117601

Also transportation sec Buttigieg just casually saying not to worry we have over 1,000 train derailments a year: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11760173/There-roughly-1-000-cases-year-train-derailing-Pete-Buttigieg-says.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11760173/There-roug... Over 1,000 derailments! Maybe we should work on getting those down before patting ourselves on the back for job well done.

hooverd 4y ago
Hey, I'm sure the majority of those are trains popping off the track at low speeds.
- mc32 4y ago
  Exactly! If he's blasé about 1000 derailments it better not be 1000 derailments of the East Palestine type per year. In any event. it's really tone deaf to say, hey, no big deal we have approx three accidents like this every day of the year, deal with it! What a wanker.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  And? The system shouldn't be in a steady state of expected failures. These are enormous machines that sometimes carry hazardous materials. Failure cannot be tolerated. It's indicative of a rotten culture of safety and mismanagement that ignores the problems.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Uh, that’s completely unrealistic. No large scale system (or any system for very long) has zero downtime. What is the overall percentage any train spends derailed?
    - qbasic_forever 4y ago
      Not when the consequence of failure for spilling hazardous material is so great! What are you going to agree to next, that nuke plants are allowed a few minutes of core meltdown a year? Get real.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        Nuclear plants have safety incidents all the time. Someone drops a hammer on their toe. That's what most of the 1,000 derailments are; things like this: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minor_Derailment_in_Brooklyn_%2850569880581%29.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minor_Derailment_in_... or https://tdn.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/amtrak-train-suffers-minor-derailment-near-woodland-monday/article_88804f3d-bbdf-5250-afc6-6925a4687755.html https://tdn.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/amtrak-train-suf... The big problems, for both trains and nuclear plants, are rare.
      - jhugo 4y ago
        "Derailment" sounds dramatic but most of them are minor. It's unrealistic and unhelpful to pretend that all incidents are equally serious: the only way to achieve zero incidents of any severity is to not build the power plant (of any type) or the train system.
      - lazide 4y ago
        Just because the consequences are severe doesn’t mean it’s possible to avoid them - regardless of the cost. For instance, plane crashes are far more severe - and still happen relatively frequently despite all effort to stop them.
  - mhh__ 4y ago
    Failure cannot be tolerated, but mother nature cannot be fooled. Its not a realistic way of thinking about risk unless you don't run any trains. 1000 also feels roughly consistent with the rest of the world considering how big the US is.
- newsclues 4y ago
  Most of it is non-issues in rail yards. The definition of derailment, isn't a big crash, it's when a wheel doesn't touch the rail (or something simple but not indicative of serious problems).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tzs 4y ago
  I expect in most of them there is no serious damage and most of the train is still on the rails. That's how the derailment I was in worked. This was an Amtrak going from the Seattle area to Los Angeles. We pulled onto a siding to let a freight train by. When our train started again it went a few feet and then there was a thud and it abruptly stopped. What happened was that the rails had separated a bit just ahead of where we had stopped on the siding, and so when the train resumed it fell off the rails. Amtrak sent a couple engines to help. One went to the back or our train, and one went to the main track in front of where the siding started. The back one was connected to the back of our train, and the derailed engine was disconnected. The back engine then pulled the rest of our train backwards onto the main track. The other engine was coupled to the front of our train, the back engine decoupled, and we were back on our way. It took around 6 hours or so from the engine derailing to the rest of the train resuming with the new engine. That was pretty annoying because we were without power most of that time, which apparently caused issues with food storage resulting in dinner being cancelled. Many of us who got on in the Seattle area had not had lunch either. The train was supposed to leave Seattle about an hour before lunch so we had planned on lunch on the train, but it actually got to Seattle after lunch.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Sounds like a typical Amtrak experience. Really cannot recommend it if you need to be at your destination on time.
dboreham 4y ago
Never mind derailments: trains can be a serious source of pollution when just being trains, because: money, of course. We have coal trains rumbling through town every day. They have nothing covering the coal. It's often windy. Result: the entire town is blanketed in a pall of black dust. It gets everywhere. Comes around the windows, even modern well sealed double glazing units. On patio furniture. In our lungs, one assumes too.
Aunche 4y ago
> Also transportation sec Buttigieg just casually saying not to worry we have over 1,000 train derailments a year That this is what people care about is why nothing gets done. A politician can't even say a fact without the news media or another opportunistic politician spinning it in the worst way possible. Imagine if this was how your company handled postmortems. Given that half the time politicians majority of time politicians spend is on optimizing their sound bites, it should be no surprise that they outsource the actual policy making part to the lobbyists.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  You're quite correct regarding the culture of handling postmortems. I had the privilege of attending a NASA talk one year where we discussed the blameless postmortem culture in software engineering and the approach of logging reports and making them open company-wide. A kind NASA engineer thanked us for our time, but noted that there's a lot of what we do in software that can't be applied to the NASA approach because, ultimately, their bosses are Congress and Congress is... somewhere between "dumb" and "an actively hostile agent." Words must be carefully chosen and information can't be widely-shared internally until the message is crafted because about half of Congress is incentivized to look for the worst possible interpretation of data collected and weaponize it.
bandyaboot 4y ago
Come on. He wasn’t “casually saying not to worry”. He literally called it a horrible situation. His point was to suggest that this particular incident was being turned into a a political football. That being said, I think his complaint is, at best, trivial considering the incident has deserved all the attention is has gotten.

hooverd 4y ago

Hey, I'm sure the majority of those are trains popping off the track at low speeds.

mc32 4y ago
Exactly! If he's blasé about 1000 derailments it better not be 1000 derailments of the East Palestine type per year. In any event. it's really tone deaf to say, hey, no big deal we have approx three accidents like this every day of the year, deal with it! What a wanker.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
And? The system shouldn't be in a steady state of expected failures. These are enormous machines that sometimes carry hazardous materials. Failure cannot be tolerated. It's indicative of a rotten culture of safety and mismanagement that ignores the problems.
- lazide 4y ago
  Uh, that’s completely unrealistic. No large scale system (or any system for very long) has zero downtime. What is the overall percentage any train spends derailed?
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    Not when the consequence of failure for spilling hazardous material is so great! What are you going to agree to next, that nuke plants are allowed a few minutes of core meltdown a year? Get real.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Nuclear plants have safety incidents all the time. Someone drops a hammer on their toe. That's what most of the 1,000 derailments are; things like this: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minor_Derailment_in_Brooklyn_%2850569880581%29.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minor_Derailment_in_... or https://tdn.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/amtrak-train-suffers-minor-derailment-near-woodland-monday/article_88804f3d-bbdf-5250-afc6-6925a4687755.html https://tdn.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/amtrak-train-suf... The big problems, for both trains and nuclear plants, are rare.
    - jhugo 4y ago
      "Derailment" sounds dramatic but most of them are minor. It's unrealistic and unhelpful to pretend that all incidents are equally serious: the only way to achieve zero incidents of any severity is to not build the power plant (of any type) or the train system.
    - lazide 4y ago
      Just because the consequences are severe doesn’t mean it’s possible to avoid them - regardless of the cost. For instance, plane crashes are far more severe - and still happen relatively frequently despite all effort to stop them.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  Failure cannot be tolerated, but mother nature cannot be fooled. Its not a realistic way of thinking about risk unless you don't run any trains. 1000 also feels roughly consistent with the rest of the world considering how big the US is.
newsclues 4y ago
Most of it is non-issues in rail yards. The definition of derailment, isn't a big crash, it's when a wheel doesn't touch the rail (or something simple but not indicative of serious problems).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tzs 4y ago
I expect in most of them there is no serious damage and most of the train is still on the rails. That's how the derailment I was in worked. This was an Amtrak going from the Seattle area to Los Angeles. We pulled onto a siding to let a freight train by. When our train started again it went a few feet and then there was a thud and it abruptly stopped. What happened was that the rails had separated a bit just ahead of where we had stopped on the siding, and so when the train resumed it fell off the rails. Amtrak sent a couple engines to help. One went to the back or our train, and one went to the main track in front of where the siding started. The back one was connected to the back of our train, and the derailed engine was disconnected. The back engine then pulled the rest of our train backwards onto the main track. The other engine was coupled to the front of our train, the back engine decoupled, and we were back on our way. It took around 6 hours or so from the engine derailing to the rest of the train resuming with the new engine. That was pretty annoying because we were without power most of that time, which apparently caused issues with food storage resulting in dinner being cancelled. Many of us who got on in the Seattle area had not had lunch either. The train was supposed to leave Seattle about an hour before lunch so we had planned on lunch on the train, but it actually got to Seattle after lunch.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Sounds like a typical Amtrak experience. Really cannot recommend it if you need to be at your destination on time.

dboreham 4y ago

Never mind derailments: trains can be a serious source of pollution when just being trains, because: money, of course. We have coal trains rumbling through town every day. They have nothing covering the coal. It's often windy. Result: the entire town is blanketed in a pall of black dust. It gets everywhere. Comes around the windows, even modern well sealed double glazing units. On patio furniture. In our lungs, one assumes too.

Aunche 4y ago

> Also transportation sec Buttigieg just casually saying not to worry we have over 1,000 train derailments a year That this is what people care about is why nothing gets done. A politician can't even say a fact without the news media or another opportunistic politician spinning it in the worst way possible. Imagine if this was how your company handled postmortems. Given that half the time politicians majority of time politicians spend is on optimizing their sound bites, it should be no surprise that they outsource the actual policy making part to the lobbyists.

shadowgovt 4y ago
You're quite correct regarding the culture of handling postmortems. I had the privilege of attending a NASA talk one year where we discussed the blameless postmortem culture in software engineering and the approach of logging reports and making them open company-wide. A kind NASA engineer thanked us for our time, but noted that there's a lot of what we do in software that can't be applied to the NASA approach because, ultimately, their bosses are Congress and Congress is... somewhere between "dumb" and "an actively hostile agent." Words must be carefully chosen and information can't be widely-shared internally until the message is crafted because about half of Congress is incentivized to look for the worst possible interpretation of data collected and weaponize it.

bandyaboot 4y ago

Come on. He wasn’t “casually saying not to worry”. He literally called it a horrible situation. His point was to suggest that this particular incident was being turned into a a political football. That being said, I think his complaint is, at best, trivial considering the incident has deserved all the attention is has gotten.