Lot of people asking me about this train crash in Washington--here's what's on my mind... In 2005 there was a dreadful train crash in Amagasaki, Japan. A staggering 107 people died when a train derailed into an apartment building.
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So Japan is averaging 6.6 deaths per year with over 18 billion riders...whereas the USA is averaging 10.9 deaths per year with less than 5 billion riders Nearly twice as many deaths despite less than a third of the ridership! Very troubling safety record here...
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I haven't heard any information yet about the cause of this accident in Washington, and it's possible that it was due to human error, which (as was the case in Amagasaki) can thwart the best of safety measures...
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...but that's kind of beside the point, which is that we have an unacceptable number of "background fatalities" happening every year on our railways which nobody bats an eye at. Huge, newsworthy crashes are bound to happen occasionally--but there's no excuse for the rest!
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I suppose we're just a bit desensitized by the incredible amount of carnage that goes down on our roads every year--what's a dozen dead in a train crash every year, compared to 40,000 dead in car crashes? But that's just an explanation--it is not an excuse!
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End of conversation
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This crash was a couple exits south of the one I take to work, there is a serious collision in this stretch of I-5 almost every single day
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And how many US auto collision fatalities happened in that time? Astronomically higher.
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