Flutterby™! : Whoah

Whoah

2018-02-07 02:45:08.496957+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

Whoah, 1990-2016, passenger rail deaths averaged 9.66/100M passenger mile. Assuming auto occupancy of 1.6, and 1.18 deaths per 100M vehicle miles, is passenger rail really an order of magnitude more dangerous than cars? I've gotta be wrong.

[ related topics: Trains ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: Whoah made: 2018-02-07 15:59:03.931067+00 by: TheSHAD0W

Can you post the source please? It *does* seem suspicious.

#Comment Re: Whoah made: 2018-02-07 18:38:14.367928+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

Rail deaths from here: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/s...statistics/html/table_02_42.html

It's likely that those include rail related suicides, but still.

Auto deaths from a lot of sources, but here's one: http://www.newsweek.com/2015-b...c-death-increase-50-years-427759

Neither the sheer number of miles driven nor a change in population seem to fully explain the jump in 2015. Motor-vehicle mileage increased by 3.5 percent between 2014 and 2015. The annual mileage death rate in 2015 was 1.22 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, up 5 percent from the previous year. Meanwhile, the annual population death rate rose by 7 percent to 11.87 deaths per 100,000 people.

#Comment Re: Whoah made: 2018-02-10 21:48:28.347624+00 by: TheSHAD0W

Yay, my internet is back.

Broken link, but I was able to find the source page. One possible reason for the high number compared to auto statistics is because only passenger trains are counted, while the auto statistics also include commercial vehicles. The train statistics may not include employee deaths though, so it might be a wash.

#Comment Re: Whoah made: 2018-02-12 17:29:13.047067+00 by: Dan Lyke

Ugh, I know I fixed the browser including whitespace for soft line breaks once...

And oh: I think I misread the passenger rail data, that's probably railroad passenger deaths per vehicle mile. It's still high, but, yeah, figure order of magnitude hundred passengers per vehicle and it makes more sense.

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