Comment by andrepd
21 hours ago
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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> 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.