402
Chemicals from East Palestine derailment spread to 16 US states, data shows
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
402 points (98.8% liked)
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It’s 2024. Why are trains still derailing? Surely there’s a better engineering design than this.
Rail workers do not have the proper time to fully inspect cars and arrange them in the proper order due to understaffing and the high volume created by maximized rail schedules that prioritize profits over safety.
That's a huge reason why rail workers wanted to go on strike before there was bipartisan cooperation led by Biden to take away their labor rights.
It's cheaper to pay the fines when accidents happen than it is to run the trains safely. Just the cost of doing business.
Yet if I criticize him, I'm accused of refusing to vote against Trump and told that I'm the problem.
That's only because you individually have been made responsible for the election. Every one else was at the meeting and didn't want the job. Good luck, and don't choose wrong!
This is a pretty funny response. It made me smile. Genuine thanks.
They only tell you your the problem? I got called a Chinese psy-op the other day.
The engineering is fine, great even. Executives have demanded that the trains run at the red line, for maximum profit. With no safety margin, when something goes wrong it goes really really wrong. That's why it was so important to hold them accountable and so fucked that we didn't. It's just a matter of time until the next accident.
It's effectively impossible to engineer around knowingly unsafe operation. The trains are fine, it's the railroads operating them unsafely and the state and federal governments refusing to maintain infrastructure that is the problem.
i wish the govt was in charge of maintaining the infrastructure, and i wish the govt owned the infrastructure then prioritized passenger traffic over freight so we could get some semblance of a working regional rail system.
Technically that’s already the law. But freight lines don’t care because the law isn’t enforced
They often do prioritize passenger trains, but if it's single track already occupied by a long, slow freight train, the passenger train is going to have to wait anyway.
I dunno. You never hear about high speed rail in Japan derailing, or the monorail at DisneyWorld going off the track. There was some crazy invention ages ago where a train with a gyroscope actually traveled on a single rail. We’ve got to do better than this.
Yeah, because they actually care about safety and put money into maintenance.
Most derailments happen due to operational error such as too much speed for the track (preventable with ATC), equipment failure (preventable with better inspection and maintenance) or external factors like a car on the tracks (not really preventable without major gate upgrades).
The only real technological innovations are automated train systems, but that technology already exists, we just don't use it in the US because the private rail operators make more money by cutting corners, not spending on upgrades.
It does happen in Japan.
In 2005, 106 passengers were killed and more than 500 injured.
That’s almost 20 years ago…
Thats line saying why are bridges still collapsing
Because zero effort has been put into maintenance!
Boats still sink, planes and cars still crash. Fundamentally, transportation will fail. The question is are these failures within an acceptable rate due to unforseen issues, or is this a problem with the system that operates and profits off of these devices, letting safety slip to maximize profit?