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nac_nabuc t1_jbcbscl wrote

Reply to comment by AverageAustralian111 in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

I've found data for Spain (47m people but probably not a lot of rail usage).

8 derailments in 2021, p. 28 of this pdf: https://www.seguridadferroviaria.es/recursos_aesf/ias_nsa_espana_2022.pdf

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AverageAustralian111 t1_jbcd47h wrote

Damn, respect for finding that.

The big problem with comparing the US and EU countries is just how different they are. US passenger transport is totally backward compared to its EU counterpart, the almost the exact reverse is true with freight rail.

Freight rail is far more prone to accidents because A) the trains are far longer and the carriages are far heavier, and B) accidents are far less of a problem because the consequences of freight derailments are usually minimal (with non-hazardous freight at least, which is the majority of freight)

The second huge difference is population density. There are vast tracts of rail in the US that are far far away from any major population centers, which naturally makes maintenance far more difficult.

The flip side of this, of course, is the average derailment in Europe will cause more injuries and fatalities, so using fatalities as a proxy for derailments (as I accidentally did above) is unfair toward the EU.

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nac_nabuc t1_jbcdia3 wrote

Yeah, it's not the most relevant comparison but Reddit loves US Vs EU comparisons. :-D

The US also moves a lot more freight by rail if I'm not mistaken.

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AverageAustralian111 t1_jbce9m5 wrote

>Yeah, it's not the most relevant comparison but Reddit loves US Vs EU comparisons.

This is so frustrating to me. As someone who works in a field that overlaps all of the favourite comparisons (economics, crime, transport etc.) I find myself screaming internally about how much of an oversimplification pretty much every comparison of two countries is.

When the Americans pull out their economic statistics (usually GDP/c) and Europeans pull out their crime statistics, I have to stop myself from commenting and pointing out how little value any of these metrics really provide for anything.

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