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Always try to sit in seats where your back is toward the direction of motion.
(edit: I guess it's more of no-brainer on a train/bus where you don't have a seat belt)
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Unusual for a train though. We already know Americans can't drive but with trains like... how do you mess up a straight line?
> For the last decade, an average of 1,300 trains derailed each year (in the US), accounting for 61% of all train accidents. https://usafacts.org/articles/are-train-derailments-becoming... > In 2024, there were 1,507 significant railway accidents in the EU, with a total of 750 people killed and 548 seriously injured. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derailm…
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FWIW: a single car crash killing 21 people would still be newsworthy in America. And I think if you math it out with something per capita equivalent, this would actually be an exceptionally bad day/incident for the US. But of course you're not wrong, trains are vastly safer than private cars. If anyone uses this as evidence against having a proper rail system, they're ignorant. But - until someone does that, there's…
~107 people die per day from car accidents in the USA [0]. 0. Per 2024 stats from the NHTSA ( https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-estimates-39345-t... )
Like I said, a pretty bad day.
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~107 people die per day from car accidents in the USA [0]. 0. Per 2024 stats from the NHTSA ( https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-estimates-39345-t... )
Right, so, mathing it out, the US has a population of around 340 million but Spain has a population of around 49 million. 340/49 is roughly 7, so the per capita equivalent in the US would be a single incident killing 21*7=147 people. So that'd be one incident killing 1.5x the average number of people usually killed across the rest of the country combined. Like I said, a pretty bad day.
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Unusual for a train though. We already know Americans can't drive but with trains like... how do you mess up a straight line?
> how do you mess up a straight line? One thing I learned working on a system that did train positioning for the 7 Line subway in NYC is that train systems are a lot more complicated than just straight lines. They are complicated networks with custom signaling and the trains don't necessarily travel on the usual side in the usual direction at all times. That said, in this particular case it basically was just two str…
Always try to sit in seats where your back is toward the direction of motion.
Huh. I'd never thought of this. If that is actually meaningfully beneficial, I wonder if they'd design self driving cars with the seats facing backwards, given there's no longer a necessity to look at the road. (edit: I guess it's more of no-brainer on a train/bus where you don't have a seat belt)
But it's really theoretical, and does not account for the passenger in front of you headed head-first into your throat.
PS: I laughed hard that xlbuttplug2 is answering to deadbabe. The internet lives!
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Right, so, mathing it out, the US has a population of around 340 million but Spain has a population of around 49 million. 340/49 is roughly 7, so the per capita equivalent in the US would be a single incident killing 21*7=147 people. So that'd be one incident killing 1.5x the average number of people usually killed across the rest of the country combined. Like I said, a pretty bad day.
A completely unremarkable day, more like it. Given stochasticity there's bound to be at least a dozen days per year with 50% more than the average, especially since car deaths depend a lot on weekday, holidays, weather and so on - much moreso than train deaths. No one would look up from it, wouldn't make the news.
Yes, a single car crash killing 150 people would make the news. It would be among the worst, if not the single worst, car accident of all time [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-vehicle_collision
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A completely unremarkable day, more like it. Given stochasticity there's bound to be at least a dozen days per year with 50% more than the average, especially since car deaths depend a lot on weekday, holidays, weather and so on - much moreso than train deaths. No one would look up from it, wouldn't make the news.
You're assuming it was the only incident in America that day, rather than an exceptional outlier stacked on top of the usual day in America. Yes, a single car crash killing 150 people would make the news. It would be among the worst, if not the single worst, car accident of all time [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-vehicle_collision
This is now how I interpreted "bad day", think it would be clearer to remove "day" if that's what you meant. Of course you're right in that it would be awful as a car accident, they simply don't happen that many as a time. Which is why our monkey brain's lack of emotional response to "many small cuts" vs "one big cut" incorrectly causes the belief that cars and e.g. coal/gas are much safer than they are.
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