[hollerith]

This seems intrinsically safer than trains, or so it seems to me (although I am not an expert). It seems safer because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow, but blowing a tire is unlikely to damage the whole train like a derailment is. At the least, the operator has the option to increase safety against blown tires by increasing the separation between cars.

Instead of bringing up safety, I'd bring up the microplastics and other pollutants emitted by the technology of the elastomeric tire and which might be an intrinsic property of cost-effective use of the technology.

[AlienRobot]

>From the very first run of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen on October 1, 1964, until the present day, there has never been a single derailment or collision on the entire full-standard Shinkansen rail network resulting in a passenger fatality

https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01045/#:~:text=Zero%20Fa...

Sounds like trains are pretty safe to me.

[hollerith]

Huh. Thanks.

[bobthepanda]

Derailments are really rare in properly maintained railroads; even the NYC subway with a century of chronic underinvestment derails rarely (think one every few years).

Cars get into accidents way more frequently. The American freight rail system derails at a more frequent rate because the private operators are incentivized to really not do any maintenance at all.

[hollerith]

Looks like I was wrong. According to an unreliable source of fast answers, "passenger rail lines appear to be two to five times safer than intercity bus lines on a per-passenger-mile basis".

[JumpCrisscross]

> actually seems intrinsically safer than trains because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow

Trains don’t “regularly” derail. And when they do, they aren’t as fatal as the median highway crash.

There are unlikely to be too many fatalities in this system because it runs slowly. (Unless Li-on batteries cascade combust somehow.)