Comment by josephcsible
2 days ago
> And yet still sometimes they crash, sometimes even on purpose.
> Meanwhile the modern train is nigh-uncrashable with modern safety technologies, even if someone wanted to.
Your comment is super misleading because it makes it sound like trains are safer than planes, but in fact, trains have several times more fatalities per passenger-mile than planes do.
A bit unfair since the statistics are skewed by countries that don't actually apply modern safety standards, not to mention incidence of suicide, easily prevented by gates at platforms, as well as improving traffic crossings (the modern solution is just not have trains at surface level, either above or below).
I can walk into an electronics store with 300$, walk out with a drone, unbox it on the train to Heathrow, and then shut down the airport by flying the drone over the tarmac, delaying thousands of people for hours and causing millions in damages from forcing diversions and planes to circle. It's just such an incredibly fragile infrastructure and ecosystem.
> A bit unfair since the statistics are skewed by countries that don't actually apply modern safety standards,
61% of this year's accidents come from the U.S. and Europe. Unless you want to play the 'no true Scotsman' game with "modern" safety standards that no one really meets for more than a few miles. (For that matter, I'm not aware of current networks that can reliably defend against operator error, let alone actively suicidal operators.)
> not to mention incidence of suicide,
Dozens of accidents and hundreds of deaths a year on that list, even though it explicitly excludes individual suicides.
> (the modern solution is just not have trains at surface level, either above or below).
Talk about colossal $$$$$ for tracks running outside of urban centers.
I don't want to play no true Scotsman, but I do disagree that Europe is for the most part nowhere near the modern safety standards you find in countries like the PRC, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. The USA rail infrastructure is a joke that writes itself, surely we can agree that their safety "standards" are practically useless, if ever actually enforced? I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to NYC but my god those platforms are death traps.
> Talk about colossal $$$$$ for tracks running outside of urban centers.
Well, that's the opposite of what I mean, I'm talking about urban centers. Which, really the actual solution is just stop letting cars into cities where they can drunk drive crash into people and streetcars, which they do so often you'd think it's their hobby. Anyway, plane infrastructure is still more expensive, still a worse experience, and still has a higher environmental cost. There's just no sensible justification for maintaining all this plane infrastructure. It's an accident of capitalism that it's gotten this far.