[retired]

Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured. The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year. Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment. In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.

Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 140 lives a year by having a limit on the Autobahn but the car lobby in Germany is very strong. Those 140 lives are seen as an OK cost just to go vroom on the Autobahn.

[Levitz]

>I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured.

Which, to be clear, is a considerable outlier. Highest since 2013 and about double the deaths and 4x the injured of a "normal" year.

Not to mention that trains are far safer than automobiles too.

>The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year.

Is this a fantastic, magical year or something? The normal number seems to be around 800 a year? https://www.kochandbrim.com/study-train-accident-deaths/

[retired]

Your number includes suicides, trespassing and more. Only 24 passenger deaths in a ten year period.

[HALtheWise]

> Not to mention that trains are far safer than automobiles too.

This claim is situationally true, but not universally so like many people seem to believe. For example, Brightline rail service in Florida has been operating since 2017 and averages (by my math) 29.8 deaths / 100M passenger-miles, while the road system in Florida averages 0.89 deaths / 100M passenger-miles. Those deaths are mostly not suicides, and imo we should treat pedestrian deaths from trains as substantially more morally weighty than passenger deaths, since it's a victim that didn't opt-in to the risk.

For what it's worth, the unusual spike in Spain train crashes this year seems to have pushed them barely over the fatality numbers of Spanish cars (0.91 deaths/100M pax-mi vs 0.73 for cars) but that's pretty clearly an outlier.

If you measure per vehicle-mile rather than per passenger-mile I'm pretty sure trains are always way more dangerous, although that's a less fair comparison.

[lancebeet]

Hm, it's only something like 10% of German traffic fatalities that occur on the autobahn. And according to wikipedia, Germany doesn't rank high in terms of traffic fatalities, even by European standards. France has a similar number of highway deaths. I'm personally not a fan of the autobahn and especially not the unrestricted speed. It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities, but the evidence for it just doesn't seem to be there.

[gsnedders]

https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/tempolimit-koennte-jaehr... claims a 75% higher fatality rate on unrestricted autobahn v. autobahn with speed limits.

But in general: freeways/motorways (whatever you want to call them) almost never account for the majority of fatalities anywhere — there’s a lot that makes them safer than the average rural road even given comparable speeds, and there’s fewer vulnerable road users around.

[AlecSchueler]

> It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities

That's not obvious at all to me, what would the reasoning be?

[lancebeet]

Maybe I expressed myself poorly. Generally, higher speed is associated with higher fatality rates, all else being equal. So, one would assume a highway without speed limits would cause lots of fatalities. Most people would probably be surprised to learn that this is not the case.

[watwut]

If there is anything remotely potentially dangerous, unlimited speed ends and the road gets well defined and enforced speed limit. If the traffic on that segment of the road gets high, they put in speed limit sign too.

Moreover, there is a question of liability for the insurance purpose. If you go above 130, you are assumed to be caused of the accident. So, most Germans go roughly 130 in those segments anyway.

[andrepd]

What. in god's name are you saying?

> Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured.

Yeah and how many in the 15 years prior? 112. Of which 80 were in a single (TGV) crash.

How many people die each year in Spanish roads? Thousands.

> The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year.

Can't have rail accidents if you don't have rail *taps side of head*

> Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment.

Oh my god, after a 140-year old tourist attraction malfunctioned! Hardly representative of any transit system whatsoever.

> In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.

This is just not true, by any metric.

And also, why are cars comparatively less dangerous in Amsterdam than in most other places? Because it is not designed for cars first, there are low speed limits enforced by traffic calming (like speed humps and narrow cobbled streets) everywhere.

[retired]

> Can't have rail accidents if you don't have rail taps side of head

The USA has the world's largest network with 220000 kilometers of rail

> This is just not true, by any metric.

In Amsterdam the tram is 57x more deathly than the car.

https://www.parool.nl/nieuws/al-twee-doden-dit-jaar-hoe-onve...

Trams in Amsterdam should be replaced with busses. Busses stop much faster and don't weigh as much. Trams are literal death machines. It's really scary to ride bicycle in Amsterdam and hear the ding-ding-ding when you are about to be run over by a tram and you quickly have to move over.

Also you seem to be a bit confused, Amsterdam does not use narrow cobbled streets for traffic calming. Maybe you are thinking of France or Belgium.

[gljiva]

No. The traffic rules for trams or tram stop positions should be adjusted and people in Amsterdam should be educated to behave around trams, i.e. in traffic in general if they want fewer deaths.

There are literally marks on every step of their path "tram is going through here, coming from there", so those that die anyway should be the ones at fault. It's horrible that they die, but banning trams is not a valid response to it. After the people have started behaving like that around trams, there isn't really a reason to assume they won't start being (even more) reckless around the less predictable and bulkier busses. You fixed braking time, but cyclists get clipped more often going out of their track as they do already. I mean, look at the description of an accident: allegedly she wore a hoodie with headphones and some stops after the intersections incentivize higher tram speeds.

Start fixing that before banning the safest and the most efficient form of transport (57x more than cars, with the amount of cars they have, number of close interactions with cyclists/pedestrians, and the imposed traffic rules for cars, isn't really a valid multiplier), scrapping all the tram lines and adjusting road tracks widths just to have buses brake harder on asphalt isn't really a fix of the problem, just a reaction to a symptom.

[retired]

You sound like someone trying to justify guns. "People should be educated to behave round them". No. Trams in Amsterdam are very dangerous and replacing them with long busses makes everything better.

Tram is not the safest form of transport, that would be the bus. As stated trams are way more deadly than cars.

And no, trams are not marked. Not in Amsterdam. Trams share the exact same path as pedestrians and cyclists, they don't have their own lanes for most parts of the route.

What about people who are visually impaired? Have hearing troubles? Should those people just stay home?

[gljiva]

Well, I hope you don't have a say in that matter, not because you disagree, but because you ignored all of the reasoning behind my points, just to repeat the same.

Your analogy about guns is irrelevant because all the negative aspects of advocating for guns are missing here, while education is always helpful. I am advocating for the safest and the most efficient option for everyone. And I said why is it so. You only mentioned braking time/distance without any evidence about buses being less lethal in the long run when substituting trams:

The same braking time can be achieved by decreasing the trams' speed (30 km/h to 20 km/h) around pedestrians and cyclists, which is more efficient than removing the tram network, making space for buses, buying and maintaining twice as many buses for the same throughput, and replacing the asphalt quite often. Keeping the trams will decrease the likelihood of pedestrians and bicyclists being clipped by bulky long buses (double the number of encounters compared to trams), while still making it easier for everyone to know where the tram may come from whenever they see the tracks (and it can't swerve, so a person knows exactly how to move in a close encounter), so that they can steer clear of its path and only cross it after they make sure there is no tram passing. Introducing the buses either reintroduces toxic exhaust gases, or buses' weight advantage gets massively decreased by carrying the batteries, while increasing the tires' and asphalt damage and shedding. Also, it doesn't mean that the trend of increasing recklessness won't continue around "safer" vehicles: I bet people were more wary of trams before, just like they are in other cities with trams.

Recklessness and abandonment of personal responsibility for own safety shouldn't be a reason for everyone else to bend over backwards. There is enough of a safety net for the wannabe Darwin award winners as-is, with trams in place. Decreasing speed, moving the stations ahead of intersections, and raising awareness that the trams are still dangerous is a reasonable change of policy. Even a pilot-project driving buses on a dangerous tram lane could be reasonable, to gather data. Blindly overhauling the whole network without a strong indicator that it's even a move in the right direction, just to maybe find a way to prolong the lives of those who themselves don't really care about their lives.

Btw, visually impaired and those of bad hearing generally know very well to use their other senses to stay safe in this as well as even worse conditions. And are better off with rails marking the trams' path (or even other markings, if introduced), than relying on the buses' braking distance.

And please avoid pretending to be dumb and saying that the trams are more deadly than the cars, without taking into account how separated the cars' roads are from pedestrians' and cyclists paths as well as their passenger throughput in Amsterdam and their speed limits. If Amsterdam had the same throughput of passengers in buses instead of trams, with buses equally mixing with pedestrians and cyclists, I bet the situation wouldn't be much different, with you equally fixated only on absolute numbers multiplier, asking for trams.

Btw, why don't you ask for cars to replace the trams? Buses, despite not being as mixed with pedestrians as trams are, racking in kilometers after midnight and between cities like cars do, still cause 15x more deaths per km than cars do.

[aidenn0]

> Can't have rail accidents if you don't have rail taps side of head

Sure the US has low rail-usage per-capita, but it's still enough for 50% more passenger-kilometers per year than Spain.

[ruszki]

There is a reason for that “per billion miles range”.