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nac_nabuc t1_jbc0p8c wrote

Reply to comment by Urmambulant in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

Are you sure you are comparing the same thing?

Your graph says fatalities. But 2015 Europe had 0 deaths and 0 serious injuries from derailments, they were all killed in different types of accidents.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=326173

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Urmambulant t1_jbc95sw wrote

I'm sure I'm not. Just wanted to give some scale of things.

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nac_nabuc t1_jbcb288 wrote

Just to give you a scale of how wrong your probably scale was: Spain had 8 derailments in 2021. Assuming every EU country has twice as many, including countries with people, Europe would have only a bit more than 400 per year while having 1/3 more population (22 of those countries have less population than Spain).

https://www.seguridadferroviaria.es/recursos_aesf/ias_nsa_espana_2022.pdf (p. 28, Spanish PDF)

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Ksumatt t1_jbcisk7 wrote

One major difference between European countries and the US when it comes to derailments is that most of our derailments are going to come from minor derailments from yard switching operations. When these happen, it’s generally something as small as a couple of wheels of one car getting on the ground. Since we primarily move freight (which requires a lot of switching) and Europe primarily moves people (which should require far less switching), you’re going to see a much larger number of derailments based on the type of operation.

I’d imagine most of those derailments in Spain and across the EU are main line derailments which are the types of derailments you generally think of. To get a good comparison we’d need to see how the US compares to the EU on main line derailments as they’re generally the ones that really matter.

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nac_nabuc t1_jbcasiu wrote

Just to give you a scale of how wrong your probably scale was: Spain had 8 derailments in 2021. Assuming every EU country has twice as many, including countries with people, Europe would have only a bit more than 400 per year while having 1/3 more population (22 of those countries have less population than Spain).

https://t.co/UN8avHovQz (pdf in Spanish sadly, p.28).

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