https://twitter.com/TPUSA/status/1625242058641518592#m
Imagine when someone hijacks a chemical truck and the cops circular firing squad it on a busy highway during rush hour… like that UPS truck a few years ago.
like that UPS truck a few years ago.
i hadn't forgotten that one and remind people about it whenever I think about it... but there's just so much shit that happens
Firing squad? What is this, the 1800s? Nah, they have robots with bombs on them. They're gonna dirty bomb a whole city
The NHS bullshit hurts the poor the most, but the US cutting safe and efficient infrastructure will really fuck things up.
We've already had supply chain issues, and then :ever-given: and nearly collapsed when people panicked and hoarded resources. Cutting back on US railroads will fuck with rich people too. How do they not see it?
Cutting back on US railroads will fuck with rich people too. How do they not see it?
Wanted to make a snarky joke about the inherent contradictions of capitalism and the falling rate of profit, but instead I'll just say that the people who make this decision (cost-cutting and gutting services to the point where they fail more often than not) are not the same people as who will be hurt financially when a disaster strikes. So while Norfolk Southern being starved to death by its own executives will hurt the entire capitalist class, it will also juice the shit out of their returns for the next couple of years before all the deferred maintenance really starts to kick in, and the executives don't really plan for that, since they intend to leave the railroad after their brief stay led to a ballooning stock price, another company is surely going to offer them a nice, cushy, low effort position.
Strictly speaking, there is. It's called a pipeline. But nobody is going to pipe a very specific set of chemicals hundreds of miles, because that would mean building a specific set of pipes for each product.
And the whole point of trains is to do that cheaply, rather than safely.
Part of me wonders what could be done beyond just train lengths. I think train consists should be forbidden from carrying more than a certain amount of different chemicals.
It's not just a matter of train lengths. Europe and China see far less derailments than the USA by several orders of magnitude and it's because they actually have safety laws around how these things can be used and what equipment trains need to have. Like brakes that work. And unions that give rail workers more than 90 seconds per car to inspect for issues. And regular maintenance.
Reposting my comment from the other thread
This is the figure for the USA number. 1704 derailments 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 per year 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.
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.
It's insane that America has the most rail of any country in the world, yet I've literally never been on a train. Only been to bars that inhabit old passenger stations sitting on lines that now run coal and industrial chemicals to the privately owned weapon manufacturing plant and power station.
last wedding i went to, some guests said they took a train instead of a plane, they said it was less expensive than plane but took more days so the cost of food put the trip above a plane trip
I took Amtrak from Charleston to NYC, about 14 hours or a little slower than driving would take. Cost $150 :/
I also take North Metro Rail pretty often since my college gives us free rides, pretty convenient for getting to my hometown and it's usually faster than driving
interesting deets, i suppose i greatly overestimated china's rail capacity considering all the high speed development
Well the EU has cities more spread out, while China has 95% of its population on the east coast so there's a lot less rail in western parts
notably the rate of derailments dropped by 20% when the UK left
the EU built back better
You could duct tape the whole thing to Charlie's massive fucking head and have him walk the freight to its destination.
massive fucking head
no sweaty, his head isn't big, his face is just smol
people don't understand rates and trucks are smaller than trains so each individual spill would be smaller and goldfish brained libs would never identify the problem
Bazingamobiles with dubious safety features (LIDAR is for losers amirite :my-hero: ) will solve this problem! :so-true:
LIDAR is dumb! the cameras on my car can only detect moving objects so its the kid's fault for standing still in the road :so-true:
I'm reading the replies and I know the :brainworms: are a meme but I seriously think some of these people have significant brain damage
Like seriously, it's hard to keep scrolling
the replies read like ChapGPT bots told to pretend to be the most fox news brained conservative
Pipelines.... The things that notoriously leak everywhere all the time....
You're telling me you want a pipeline full of vinyl chloride running past your house?
youve heard of boring, old acid rain. get ready for concentrated acid rain, now with more chlorine!
other countries do things completely fine for the most part
complete freak accident, extremely fatal and disastrous results from doing the same things, but it happens in the US
Americans: “it must be the fault of everything else”
