Railroad track trespassing kills 526 in 2014

[CHamilton]

Railroad track trespassing kills 526 in ’14

Death toll highest in 8 years

Speakers at a federal forum on railroad trespassing Tuesday called for more education and prevention to curb a stubbornly stable annual number of deaths and injuries.
“As a culture and as a country, we simply have not yet accepted that trains and railroad operations are inherently dangerous,” Sarah Feinberg, the Federal Railroad Administration’s acting administrator, said at the National Transportation Safety Board’s Trains and Trespassing: Ending Tragic Encounters forum, webcast from Washington.

“Most who walk along the tracks really don’t think they’re breaking the law,” NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said, while “others glamorize the risk.”

He cited two popular fitness instructors killed recently while posing for photographs along railroad tracks, and a movie crew that illegally set up a bed and other props on a CSX Transportation bridge in Georgia last year and was surprised by a train.

One of the movie crew’s members was killed, six others were injured, and its director recently received a two-year prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter.

The movie crewman’s death, which the safety board formally blamed on trespassing in a report issued Tuesday, was one of 526 such deaths along U.S. railroad lines in 2014, according to the Federal Railroad Administration and Operation Lifesaver.

 

[NW cannonball]

I totally support efforts to reduce trespasser injuries and deaths.

But - a few hundred per year is not a big deal. About the same as firefighters or cops or perinatal moms. All small, but important, and exaggerated always. Out of 300+ million living persons in the USA

Falls in the home, motor vehicle -- about 25000 deaths each year.

Or check the statistics yourself.

CDC reports 130,557 accidental deaths recent years. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm>

What's a few hundred in that maelstrom?

Not to say it's wrong to use or abuse statistics for good purposes.

But -- please consider the overall picture before blaming any transport mode. Huh.

Or blaming ladder or bathtub manufacturers -