• culpritus [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    someone please find sources for this data, I'd love to have comparison data like this

    found a few basic use stats by country on wiki, but nothing about derailments or safety

    • kristina [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      This is the figure for the USA number. 1704 a year.

      This is the figure for the EU number. I appear to have remembered the exact number incorrectly. If you check the charts mentioned, which you will find for download here you can see that the average amount of train derailments per year in the EU from 2010-2021 is 81, with the highest number being 100 in 2013, and the lowest number 62 in 2016. The countries on record with the highest amount of derailments were the UK and Poland, so notably the rate of derailments dropped by 20% when the UK left. In the past couple of years, Poland got better and Turkey are the worst, Turkey counted for a bit over 1/3rd of the derailments in the dataset. I'm not sure why Turkey is included in this dataset in particular, I assume that its some sort of transportation law that makes them integrated. If you remove Turkey and the UK from the dataset entirely it comes out to 51 derailments on average over the past 10ish years. It should be noted that from 2006-2008 the EU+Turkey had around 420 derailments on average, by 2009 they halved it, and by 2010 it was dropped to 89.

      I do remember diving into it at one point and also looked into China, which had similar rates to the EU, but slightly less. Which is impressive considering the size of their country.

      • cawsby [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        You are supposed to replace rails every 5-10 years. Which most of the EU does and the US absolutely doesn't do, except in heavily trafficked areas.

        There are no regulations requiring replacement, only maintenance which leaves a lot up to each rail company. Which means they take the cheapest route and do nothing until something happens.