Airline accidents kill hundreds of people outright. The media gives those stories tons of attention (If it bleeds, it leads) and accordingly the airline industry knows it must take safety seriously to protect their profits.
Meanwhile the chemical industry kill the gods only know how many thousands of people over the course of decades with a steady trickle of statistically correlated illnesses, but the media doesn't cover it and the consumers of chemical goods feel insulated from harm which seems very abstract and indirect to them. A consumer buying a chemical good is not directly imperiled by the chemical industry in the same way as an airline flier is threatened by airline crashes.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why the airline industry is better at safety than the chemical industry.
Yes I agree, that was my point. Though I was comparing train derailments overall, not chemical spills. Chemicals are needed for society.
Nationalizing trains will not help. Nationalizing chemical transfers won't help either if it's the same EPA in charge that said 9/11 debris was safe or this spill was okay.
Heavier regulations on trains may be needed, especially when transferring hazardous loads, but nationalization would be horrendous.
All that be said, investing in pipelines is a much safer form of transfer for these chemicals. Trains are too risky.
