Railway Safety Issues Have No Easy Answers

The derailment of an Amtrak train near Philadelphia, which claimed the lives of eight people and injured more than 200 more passengers, is only the latest in a rash of serious railroad accidents this year. In February, a Metro-North Railroad crash near Valhalla, New York, killed six people and injured 15 others. Meanwhile, there have been several significant derailments of oil trains that have caused spills and fires around the country. After these kinds of incidents, people inevitably and understandably reach for answers. How did it happen? And how can we prevent something like this happening again? But after researching train accidents over the past 25 years, I’ve discovered that there are rarely, if ever, simple answers for this complex phenomena.