Now we get flimsy aluminum cans just like Europe has, so we can die in crashes just like Europeans do. This is thought to make trains more appealing.
The impact hazards are different. Europe mostly doesn't have freight rail, at least nothing like the USA does. Here in the USA, our rail is almost exclusively freight. We even have a train service just for orange juice. Freight is everywhere.
Europeans take the risk, and it isn't too crazy because there is no freight. That's nice for them. We have freight.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... claims that "Based on the latest data available (generally for 2016), there were 401 billion passenger-kilometres travelled on national railway networks in the EU (including 2015 data for Denmark and 2014 data for Hungary; excluding Belgium and the Netherlands). This figure was considerably higher than the 22 billion passenger-kilometres travelled on international journeys (based on the same data availability)"
If a full freight train crashes into a full passenger train at speed, I doubt armoring the cars is going to help much.
What will help is systems that make collisions less likely, and a system that makes passenger rail feasible in the first place (not sure if that's possible in the US, because the typical distances are just so much bigger).
I actually count 7 (1 LU, 1 BE, 3 GR, 1 FI). If you discount the crew, who face a higher risk than passengers, it's 3 (0 LU, 1 BE, 1 GR, 1 FI).
There are some worse recent accidents involving head-on collisions at significant speed [1], [2], but to see whether the resulting investigation concluded that differently-designed trains would have reduced injuries, the report (for me) needs to be in English.
For that, since the UK has the safest railway in Europe (the world?) we need to go back to 2001 [3], with a closing speed collision at 142mph / 229km/h and 10 deaths. The investigation report [4] concludes (12.10) "The crashworthiness displayed by the passenger coach body shells, when subjected to end impact, was adequate. The first five coaches had some of their survival space reduced by roof, floor and side impacts, or penetration by large missiles or other vehicles. Impact with the underside of the road bridge was responsible for roof damage. The ability of the vehicles to protect their occupants was compromised by the loss of some roof sections and window glass."
>Rather than just bulk up, European and Asian trains instead are designed to absorb impacts and avoid collisions in the first place. And they have better safety records.
That bit about "designed to absorb impacts and avoid collisions" sounds like an excuse. Of course we all design for that.
The "better safety records" bit, if true, is a great argument that American trains need to be more able to withstand crashes. We might need to make them more impact-resistant, not less impact-resistant.
> That bit about "designed to absorb impacts and avoid collisions" sounds like an excuse. Of course we all design for that.
No, we don't. Industrial design has only recently begun to take that approach. The old way is "bigger is better," and is the approach taken by, for example, school buses in the USA which have an insane safety record. I believe this year was the first time in over a decade that there was even a single on-board casualty in a US school bus.
Now we get flimsy aluminum cans just like Europe has, so we can die in crashes just like Europeans do. This is thought to make trains more appealing.
The impact hazards are different. Europe mostly doesn't have freight rail, at least nothing like the USA does. Here in the USA, our rail is almost exclusively freight. We even have a train service just for orange juice. Freight is everywhere.
Europeans take the risk, and it isn't too crazy because there is no freight. That's nice for them. We have freight.