
Amtrak derailment: safety gear was not active after rush to launch service - charlysl
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/19/amtrak-derailment-seattle-washington-positive-train-control
======
bogomipz
>"Railroads are under government orders to install positive train control by
the end of 2018 after the industry lobbied Congress to extend earlier
deadlines, citing complexity and cost"

Amtrak receives well over a billion dollars a year in subsidies from the US
Federal government[1], they should not be allowed to use cost as an excuse for
not modernizing safety.

Also I think if you sight safety as being too complex then maybe you have no
business operating a monopoly passenger rail service. Lawmakers are just as
much to blame for this tragedy as the incompetence and disregard at Amtrak.

[1] [https://www.cbo.gov/budget-
options/2013/44782](https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/2013/44782)

~~~
tjohns
My understanding is that many modern Amtrak locomotives _are_ equipped with
PTC. Either way, the problem was that the track was not yet equipped with the
necessary transmitters to communicate with the train (and isn't yet mandated
to, since the railroad industry keeps lobbying to move the implementation date
forward).

In Amtrak's defense, my understanding is that this track was actually owned by
WSDOT / Sound Transit. And the mainline track (privately) owned by Union
Pacific / BNSF isn't any better. Amtrak owns very little track of it's own on
the west coast.

The failure to deploy PTC is a systemic issue with the entire railroad
industry.

~~~
justicezyx
Classic "obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility"...

My problem, not my problem, his problem, not his problem... What a stupid
situation...

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Amtrak doesn’t really make a profit on its own. Anyone who has ever travelled
portland to Seattle knows how slow it can be as freight gets priority.

~~~
bogomipz
Then it should be broken up and managed differently. The idea that a company
with a sanctioned monopoly who receives over a billion dollars a year in
subsidies loses money is absurd.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You are basically demanding that the service should not exist. No one will
compete for these routes, very few train systems in the world are profitable
in themselves (even JR would lose money if it wasn’t for train station real
estate).

~~~
bogomipz
No I am not "basically demanding" that the service should not exist. There is
no reason why smaller regional companies couldn't exist and be profitable,
offer better service and provide a compelling alternative to buses.

------
zaroth
Besides being a tragedy, this is a national embarrassment. It's a fucking
_train_ on a _track_ on it's _maiden_ voyage. And they crashed it.

It should not be humanly possible to configure the train to run at 80 mph over
a section of track rated for 30 mph. The idea that some people say we need
billions of dollars to make this work only compounds the embarrassment.

We want Level 5 self driving cars but we can't control a single variable
(velocity) in a 1 dimensional problem space?!

Shame. Shame. Shame.

~~~
iaabtpbtpnn
The solution you're asking for exists and is called Positive Train Control.
They didn't have it.

~~~
zaroth
So who goes to jail?

But I have a feeling that the money sucking industry selling a particular
solution called "Positive Train Control" has managed to create some sort of
undeployable monstrosity. And what we actually need is something completely
different which costs virtually nothing to implement.

~~~
subway
Over PTC?

Nobody would be going to jail... It's a relatively new technology, and
legislation is already in place mandating it be universal by the end of 2018.
I find difficulty in faulting either Amtrak or Sound Transit for not yet
having 100% coverage -- both are actively rolling it out.

Outside of PTC, multiple safety protocols were violated, with responsibility
_likely_ falling to the Engineer and possibly Conductor. In systems not
equipped with PTC, the engineer and conductor both are responsible for knowing
the allowable speed for a given block of track, with the conductor being
responsible for "enforcing" the safe operation of the train -- i.e. yell at,
or even remove the engineer from the controls and/or initiate emergency
braking.

(This is based on the way CSX operated when I was a freight conductor in '05\.
Obviously a decade later and a different railroad the responsibility hierarchy
probably varies a bit, but I imagine it isn't _terribly_ far off)

~~~
zaroth
Relatively new technology... that’s been around since the 50s.

And what you’re saying is backwards thinking. The problem isn’t that the old
way of driving trains isn’t perfect. We already know that.

The problem is we still have humans driving the trains. In 2017. It’s
ridiculous.

~~~
subway
I don't disagree, but to suggest somebody go to jail over a single incident
that could have been prevented by a technology already under deployment is
equally ridiculous.

In 2005, PTC was a technology found almost strictly in yards and on local or
regional lines where a single railroad operated both the rolling stock and
track infrastructure. Seeing that in 2017, 12 years later, Amtrak is at 49%
coverage on locomotives, and 67% on track coverage, the situation (from a PTC
deployment standpoint) seems hardly criminal.

[https://www.fra.dot.gov/app/ptc/](https://www.fra.dot.gov/app/ptc/)

------
cpitman
I'd guess that until PTC becomes standard across the country, new lines may be
deployed with out it. The lack of PTC certainly doesn't stop them from running
trains on pre-existing lines today.

I've spent almost the last decade involved with designing and implementing the
messaging system behind PTC. Every one of these disasters makes me wish it was
deployed everywhere. But for better or worse, railroads are incredibly change
and risk intolerant. Everything goes through extensive testing before being
rolled out into the field, which can add several years to any rollout plan.

------
DigitalJack
That this is a problem is just ridiculous. It's on freaking rails! There is
absolutely no excuse for this. GPS, Inertial Nav, simply integrating speed
over time, it should be absolutely dead simple to calculate exactly where the
train is at all times.

The article mentioned crap like differential GPS. Completely unnecessary. You
don't need to be that accurate, I mean good grief, +/\- 100 feet would be just
fine for dealing with such gross overspeed detection.

I can't believe this is actually a problem. Pure politics/bureaucracy. It's
certainly not a technical problem.

~~~
sobellian
> simply integrating speed over time

This probably runs into issues with accumulated error, especially if the error
in speed measurement has a serial correlation.

~~~
DigitalJack
That’s what sensor fusion is for.

That said, inertial nav can take a plane across the country without correction
and get within sight of the target.

I think integrating actual speed while on rails would be vastly more accurate.

And really, it just need to augment gps.

~~~
AstralStorm
Are you trying to reinvent already outdated ETCS level 2?

~~~
DigitalJack
I'm not inventing anything.

And why would it be outdated if it works, and we (US) aren't using it.

------
blibble
overspeed protection has been standard on most national railways for decades

is there any reason they invented a new system (expensive and slow to rollout)
vs. using an existing tried and tested one?

the main UK system (there are two) is nothing to write home about, but it is
gloriously simple and was very fast and cheap to deploy: two metal
transmitters live in the track bed coming up to a hazard, spaced such that
they are 1 second apart at the maximum speed

if the train detector passes over both in less than 1 second then the brakes
are triggered automatically

they look like this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Protection_%26_Warning_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Protection_%26_Warning_System#/media/File:Tpws_loop.jpg)

~~~
cpitman
PTC is a lot more than overspeed control, imagine any use case that would be
enabled by electronically controlled trains connected to a highly available
network.

~~~
blibble
perfect is the enemy of good

TPWS was always a stopgap (rolled out in the 90s while ETCS was being
developed); as I said it was cheap and easy to deploy, and has prevented many
accidents exactly like this one for 25 years

ETCS does what you are describing, and has been live in the UK and Europe
since the early 00s

it works, and is slowly being rolled out everywhere replacing TPWS

so, again, why re-invent the wheel?

even the Chinese are adopting it

------
jimktrains2
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L8TM-
LGDt5M](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L8TM-LGDt5M)

The Pennsylvania Railroad had the equivalent of positive train control on all
their mainlines by the late 50s. It's sad that we don't have it everywhere
almost 60 years later

~~~
betterunix2
Is someone offering to pay? The reason we do not have a Pennsy anymore is that
they went bankrupt, partly because they had to compete with subsidized
highways and airports (there are various other reasons).

The fact is that PTC is an expensive way to increase the safety of one of the
safest ways people can travel. Automobiles are far more dangerous. If the
billions of dollars being spent on PTC were instead used to expand passenger
service (and take cars off the road) we would almost certainly save more
lives.

Also keep in mind that PTC solves just one of many ways that train wrecks can
occur. It is not hard to find examples of other recent fatal incidents that
PTC would have done nothing to prevent:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valhalla_train_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valhalla_train_crash)

~~~
mulmen
I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying we should disregard train
safety because there are other more dangerous forms of travel?

Travel by rail may be one of the safest methods of travel (citation needed)
but the US has much more dangerous rail infrastructure than the rest of the
developed world. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for this.

The fatal train crash in this article was on the first run of a newly expanded
line. It injured more people than were on the train because it fell on the
freeway.

You may be able to cherry pick train crashes that PTC would not have prevented
but my understanding is that several recent (last 10 years) fatal crashes
would have been prevented by PTC.

~~~
betterunix2
My point is that we can spend billions of dollars making trains safer, or we
can spend those billions expanding passenger rail to reduce the number of
people who drive, something which would save far more lives.

It is a matter of economics. A dollar spent on PTC is a dollar not spend
expanding passenger rail service (and the PTC mandate raises the cost of
building new passenger lines), and the question is whether or not it is worth
the extra safety. Considering how safe rail transit already is, and how much
more unsafe driving is, it seems like our money would be better spent taking
cars off the road.

Or to put it another way, I am arguing that focusing only on rail fatalities
is _too narrow_ and that we should instead focus on travel fatalities in
general. Increased access to passenger trains, more frequent and more reliable
service, and faster passenger service are all ways to reduce travel fatalities
because all the above reduce the number of people who drive. PTC also reduces
travel fatalities, but not by as much. If you need a more extreme example,
many lives could be saved by banning automobiles altogether, but obviously the
costs would be far too high to justify such an approach.

~~~
mulmen
Except in this case we did spend the money on PTC but then didn't bother to
turn it on. This fatal crash was the first run of a newly expanded line. Are
all new rail line expansions dangerous? If so will trains still be safer than
cars if we expanded them enough to carry similar numbers?

I think I understand your argument but I'm not convinced more routes without
PTC is safer without seeing numbers.

That train was only 1/3 full, if we added more trains and put more people on
those trains would the deaths really be lower? What if we compare to just the
alternative of traffic fatalities on interstates between Seattle and Portland?
Also this train fell onto the freeway and injured drivers, is that included in
traffic statistics (slightly facetious)?

I'm not convinced that banning automobiles entirely would save lives. There
are too many practical concerns there. Do ambulances still exist? Would people
just drive anyway, perhaps ignoring all laws or driving unsafely to flee
police? It's not a compelling argument.

I take issue the most with the attitude that we shouldn't be critical of the
safety of trains because there is another method of travel that is worse
because that kind of thinking does nothing to make trains safer.

~~~
betterunix2
Keep in mind that Amtrak had tested the route and conducted numerous practice
runs prior to this accident. None of those practice rules ended with
derailments. It is unfortunate that on the first day that this route was
operated with passengers, some kind of mistake was made and the train exceeded
the speed limit. Obviously there is not much more that can be said about what
happened until the NTSB report is published. New passenger services are
introduced without incident on a fairly regular basis.

I have no idea how popular Cascades is between Portland and Seattle, or how
many people would choose to take that train rather than drive on I-5.

As for fatality numbers, here is one study that tries to extract an apples-to-
apples comparison of different transit modes, from 2010 (before PTC had been
installed or activated on many routes):

[http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf](http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf)

Trains are safer than cars according to those numbers. There may be some
nuances involving how fatalities are being reported; for example, whether or
not we should count fatalities involving trespassers being struck by trains.
Regardless, it seems pretty clear that yes, if more people took trains instead
of driving, fewer people would die. If you know of a better way to make the
comparison I would love to see it.

I am not suggesting that we should not be critical of train safety. There is a
long history of railroads killing people and there are good reasons for many
of the safety regulations applied to trains. The reason passenger rail is so
safe is that so many regulations are in place. For the same reason, it is hard
to see why spending billions of dollars to install one more safety system
makes sense, especially when there is a competing mode of transit that is far
less safe.

~~~
mulmen
The test runs did not include PTC though. The entire point of requiring PTC is
that railroads will not install it themselves because they don't think they
need it.

My concern with saying trains should replace cars because they are safer is
that trains don't do the same thing as cars and interstates do. Trains can't
take me around town but cars are often used for that which skews the numbers.
I would like to see the risk in micromorts [1] for travel from Seattle to
Portland by car, plane and rail[2].

If I want to go to Portland from Seattle I have several choices. The top three
from most to least likely for me are:

1) Drive my car down I-5.

2) Fly.

3) Take the train.

I suspect most people are in a similar situation and I think we can both agree
that more people drive their cars to Portland than take the train in any given
period of time.

I do not agree with your assumption that just putting more people on trains
will magically save lives. Specifically I do not think that putting the people
who drive to Portland on a train will necessarily save lives. This is for
several reasons:

1) The existing trains do not carry anywhere near as many people as I-5 does
so we must drastically increase the number of trains and possibly rails. This
would drastically increase the chances of train on train collisions which are
uncommon today (but still happen). There could be other issues here such as
the availability of qualified operators.

2) Trains are much slower than driving or flying. The train to Portland takes
10.5 hours, by car it takes 3.5 and by plane is an hour in the air plus a
couple hours to get to the airport and get through security so call it the
same as driving. For trains to compete with this we would have to
significantly increase speed which would increase danger.

I'm with you, I would love for there to be better rail options in the United
States. I don't think we get there by just scaling up and ignoring the risks
and problems. If rail companies can't safely operate their trains with the
small amount of current utilization why would we expect it to get better (or
even stay the same) with higher volumes? Changes must be made to a lot of
aspects of railroads to increase ridership but safety is absolutely one of
them.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort)
[2]: Note that 250 miles by car seems to include all forms of driving, not
just driving on the freeway.

e: From the linked study it looks like highway driving is one of the most
dangerous forms of driving. My point stands that this is more complex than it
looks and rail transit does not scale linearly.

------
ww520
I've worked on two PTC projects, one successful and one failure, after
hundreds of millions dollars. The successful one took about 6 years and is
still on a trial basis. The failed one had an aggressive schedule but ran out
of money after 3 years going nowhere. This thing is not as easy as it seems.

~~~
mulmen
I'm interested in your experience, what makes it so hard? The PTC roll-out is
not new but delays seem common, it's obviously hard but why? Once we figure it
out in one place can that experience be applied elsewhere easily?

~~~
elfchief
Yeah, this is really weird to me. They're talking about installing sensors on
particular tracks and the like, after saying that it's GPS-based, but... why?
Stick a GPS on the engine, load a database of maximum speeds, get instant
safety. What'm I missing?

(Yeah, you have to integrate with the engines themselves, but that seems like
not a 6-year project, and especially not once it's been designed and tested.
It probably also won't account for "stop, there's something else on the
tracks", but just speed-checking seems like it would be a massive reduction of
risk with very little complexity...)

~~~
dboreham
Even an app on the driver’s phone that alerts when they’re exceeding the speed
limit would have prevented many of the recent crashes because the drivers
weren’t incapacitated - just distracted or confused. Many recent cars also
know when you’re driving over the speed limit and display an alert. Not
billions of $

~~~
shagie
An AP Press reprint: [http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general-
news/20171219/engineer-i...](http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general-
news/20171219/engineer-in-fatal-amtrak-derailment-might-have-been-distracted-
by-trainee-in-locomotive)

> Engineer in fatal Amtrak derailment might have been distracted by trainee in
> locomotive

> Investigators are looking into whether the Amtrak engineer whose speeding
> train plunged off an overpass, killing at least three people, was distracted
> by the presence of an employee-in-training next to him in the locomotive, a
> federal official said Tuesday.

> The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and
> spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators want to know whether the
> engineer lost “situational awareness” because of the second person in the
> cab.

Just distracted or confused is a real possibility that is being looked into.

~~~
AstralStorm
In which case a standard attention system would have worked. The ancient ATS
that just stops the train when not cleared.

------
tomalpha
According to a 2011 article[0], the US has (or at least had) the largest
number of deaths per passenger-mile in the world.

It’s easy to overweight recent events. Can this be true? It feels like there’s
a piece missing somewhere.

[0] [https://pedestrianobservations.com/2011/06/02/comparative-
ra...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2011/06/02/comparative-rail-safety/)

~~~
jdonaldson
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-
sa...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jul/25/how-safe-are-
europe-railways)

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
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?...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php?title=Rail_accident_fatalities_in_the_EU) [2]
[http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Glossary:Accidents_to_persons_caused_by_rolling_stock_in_motion)
[3] [http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-and-european-
rail-...](http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-and-european-rail-
safety.html)

~~~
jdonaldson
Great details, thanks.

------
mindfulplay
This is insane to think this happened in 2017 in USA. No other modern
industrialized nation suffers these many embarrassing train derailments and
with no blame/shame in the end. "Thoughts and prayers" my ass from WSDOT and
Amtrak.

It shouldn't take a billion dollars to figure this out. even the simplest
techniques like proper railway training that they do in Japan would go a long
way.

------
Fej
The PATH subway system between NYC and NJ has been boasting on little ads
inside the cars that they are implementing communications-based train control
and positive train control. How would positive train control work underground,
if it's GPS-based?

~~~
niftich
If I accurately recall, PATH is rolling out Siemens Trainguard MT; a
Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) system which uses trackside (between-
the-tracks) beacons and in-car equipment.

Radar is used to figure out the vehicle's distance from the beacons. The
system communicates using a wireless-and-wired network to a control center and
keeps track of mobile blocks. Here's a brochure [1]. I'm not entirely sure,
but I think GPS isn't used in Trainguard -- which makes sense; the beacons
know where they are in relation to the track geometry, and locations only need
to be resolved in track-space.

[1]
[http://www.mobility.siemens.com/mobility/global/SiteCollecti...](http://www.mobility.siemens.com/mobility/global/SiteCollectionDocuments/en/rail-
solutions/rail-automation/train-control-systems/trainguard-mt-en.pdf)

------
dsfyu404ed
I'm not convinced this is operator error. This is the first run on this route
so it's unlikely the engineer was asleep.

2nd Hand copy paste from another part of the web I visit. I couldn't find the
original source:

"If the wheels locked up at 81.1 MPH on the 1.4% down grade there would be no
way to slow that lightweight train as in 41 seconds it would be into the 30
MPH curve. The engineer would not have time to release the locked-up brakes,
apply sand and make a new braking application. Even with electronic brakes,
the system does not work that fast. The NTSB should not take a year, like
happened regarding the engineer who failed to stop at Hoboken, had failed to
blow his horn at many crossing in his trip and the Conductor failed to check
on his bad performance during that inbound train trip. That NJ Transit train
had an inward facing camera but its recording was kept secret for over a year.
This was a passenger only track and the rail conditions were not likely felt
by the engineer as there were no prior locations where he could get a feel of
the slipperiness of the rail head. This was a new line and even thought there
were many qualifying test trips, it could be likely this was the first morning
with just the right dampness, temperature to make very bad rail conditions.
Were many test runs made at this early time of morning? As far back in the
1960, when single Budd Rail Diesel Cars were use on commuter runs with various
station stops in an early Fall morning, some morning the rails were so slimy
the RDC’s Rollacon anti-slide system would release the brakes when the wheels
locked up, and the RDC would fail to stop at the platform and have to back up.
One morning this happened at 3stations so when the engineer approached the
terminal interlocking with a possible red signal, there was a very slow
approach as going past a red signal could not be corrected by a short back up.
Many East Coast electrified commuter railroads are very familiar with bad rail
condition caused by ground up leaves on the rail head which creates carbon
black and misty water for a very efficient lubricant that can only be
eliminated with sand. But electric suburban cars do not have sand. There is an
entire industry used to wash the rail head and apply solutions to improve the
traction for these trains Railfans who own and use their own track motor cars
(Speeders) become well qualified of the need to test for the rail conditions
and learn the distance it would take to stop at any place on their run. A leaf
ground-up track can be so slimy that a light track car can fail to get enough
traction to go up a 0.10 % grade without spinning their power wheel. You
cannot even gain any speed as the wheels will just spin out. And if you’re
coming down a 1 or 2% grade, with is very common on many lines, you can go
into a slide and wish you had an anchor to throw out. Being on a frozen rail
track, and then have some very misty or rain situation, can be worst that
being on a highway that was frozen over and then have been rain on over the
ice. Sometimes in those cases a car rubber tire will just coast you over to
the curb with just the crown on the street. Most cases a rail head can be
worse than any highway surface for having traction. I believe the train 501
wheels locked up and the train slid into the 30 MPH curve at too high a speed.
PS: Positive Train Control will not know of the possible bad rail condition
and this wreck may have happened regardless of PTC in effect or not. That
system cannot tell which is the worst case rail condition and is designed for
the average expectation of conditions. So much for crewless trains, that will
never happen. "

~~~
mulmen
I don't follow the logic in your first sentence.

The copy pasted quote is nothing but speculation.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>I don't follow the logic in your first sentence.

When you're running the highly publicized 1st run of a new route you don' t
use that time to play angry birds on your phone, you pay attention.

>The copy pasted quote is nothing but speculation.

He's saying that there's things other than driver error or mechanical failure
that could have contributed to the crash

~~~
mulmen
There is nothing about the physical world that guarantees a person pays
attention because something is important. A common cause of accidents is when
people do not pay attention. Train crashes specifically have happened in
recent years due to distracted operators. Just because this run was more
important than normal does not somehow mean the operator could _not_ have been
distracted.

> He's saying that there's things other than driver error or mechanical
> failure that could have contributed to the crash

Right, that's speculation.

~~~
jboles
I believe the point he’s making is that the driver’s attention is more likely
to wander when it’s a routine trip done many times before.

This was the first run on the new route, not a routine trip.

------
yellow_postit
Nothing in the article about a “rush to launch”. I would love all safety tech
to rollout immediately but it doesn’t and it’s not reasonable to expect no new
lines to launch. Pushing to delay installs for cost reasons though still
doesn’t sit well.

~~~
mikeash
What do you mean, "expect no new lines to launch"? The article says that the
safety systems in question are being installed and will be ready relatively
soon, but they chose to start service without them. Delaying a new service for
a little while to wait for such things to be installed seems pretty
reasonable!

~~~
betterunix2
It seems less reasonable when you compare the safety of train travel to the
safety of automobile travel, and when you consider that every time a new
passenger route is opened it takes cars off the road. Yes there are train
wrecks, and yes, PTC would have prevented _this specific wreck_ , but trains
remain one of the safest modes of transit.

~~~
mikeash
Are you sure trains are safer? I found these tables:

[https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...](https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_42.html)

[https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...](https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_17.html)

Train fatalities tend to be clumped so the stats tend to vary a lot from one
year to the next, but it looks like in recent years the typical rate is
something like 5 fatalities per 100 million passenger-miles. The car data only
gives fatalities per vehicle-mile for some reason, but that will always be a
pessimistic number (at least until autonomous cars happen), and that rate is
just a bit over 1 fatality per 100 million vehicle-miles.

It looks like cars are quite a bit safer, unless I've misunderstood something.
The absolute number of fatalities is far lower for trains, but the number of
passenger miles per year is also far lower.

~~~
betterunix2
One issue is that the motor vehicle fatalities table seems to include data
from buses (that is how I understand the references), which are safer than
cars. I tried looking at the sources for the passenger rail data but a quick
glance was not very informative.

Here is another study, from 2010, showing some very different numbers:

[http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf](http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf)

