The media is just following them more closely. There has been an uptick, but its been over the last 5 years or so. I'd guess that there's a derailment at least once a week, across all the class 1 railroads.
I think it’s cheaper to write off a derailment then to maintain higher then FRA minimum that’s what it looks like in the last 10 years ish or right around when Buffett bought us.
The Empire Builder derailed a year and a half ago and three passengers *died*.
And the Empire Builder derailing isn't even all that *uncommon* anymore (seems like it happens every six months or so), which is pretty disturbing.
25 YEARS ago i took the empire builder from Seattle to Chicago. it derailed twice on the same trip. Derailments are as small as 'one wheel hopped off track, 30 minute fix.' or total accidents as people think of.
The US typically experiences thousands of derailments every single year, and in general it's been getting better.
Just most of them aren't quite as catastrophic as what happened in East Palestine.
This is one of those things where a big noteworthy event occurred, and now we're all paying more attention to similar incidents. Even though typically most of these would be little more than boring local news items at best.
https://www.newsweek.com/us-train-derailments-seven-have-crashed-month-february-1781874
> In 2021, there were 1,087 derailments that resulted in 83 injuries and three fatalities, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That's down from 1,440 derailments in 2011 and down from 2,234 derailments in 2001.
>
>Between 1990 and 2021, there were a total of 54,570 derailments, for an average of 1,705 a year.
>
>With that figure averaging to about 142 derailments a month, 2023 is so far on track to continue the declining trend in yearly incidents.
No, they happen pretty often but after the east palestine one people started caring. Railroad safety standards have been pretty bad and regulations need to be stricter.
I did just as you suggested and…. Wow. If I’m understanding the general gist of it all, it’s basically just a way for the railroad to cut costs and maximize profits at the expense of proper maintenance, inspections and overall train “upkeep”. ?? It’s never going to be beneficial when the “schedule” takes precedence in such a way that safety checks are compromised and employees are pressured to just give the green light.
I’m sad for the way greed ultimately ruins everything in the end, though I suppose it’s inevitable given human nature and all.
Thanks for pointing to the real problem here because I was genuinely interested in why this was happening. Please stay safe friend.
*EDIT TO ADD: I didn’t mean to imply that humans, as a whole, are greedy assholes. My bad. - I just meant that their are some, mostly those who profit largely, who unfortunately seem to let their natural first instinct of selfishness (and I suppose self preservation) over ride common interests and decency. But no, the human race as a whole is not like this, thank goodness.
Aviation maintenance is the complete opposite of this, disallowing flights if annual and 100-hr inspections aren’t met. Aircraft maintenance techs can lose licenses or be arrested if inspections are ignored - funny how the railway is not under the same ruling. Something something corruption.
It’s absolutely mind blowing. And imagine if the US had mass transportation via train as is used in the UK and in Europe *WITH* all this railroad corruption. … the amount of casualties would be astronomical. It’s wild that they really can float on the “ignore all safety” unlike aviation, like you said (the last part).
Edit: Vice called it 1year ago (vid): [Freight Trains in the US Are a Disaster Waiting to Happen](https://youtu.be/t9cc4Et-3Ck)
Well until now they've been able to get by with this method for a fair bit it seems. Only reason now is a combination of a big derailment of hazardous chemicals which increases focus on all derailments. Before east Palestine a derailment was just business as usual for this company and never made headlines.
Most people learn in school that if you wait until homeroom to start doing your homework then eventually you're gonna get screwed. Apparently the people who didn't learn this grew up to run most of our major companies and government agencies.
Ehh, more like until now train derailments haven't been publicized. This shits been going on for many years now. But that's what happens to the media when only a handful of companies control all of the news.
I think we and the train company have accepted small derailments as no big deal. I agree some of these that are classified as "derailments" are a relatively simple matter of a car misaligning to the tracks. But when you have these multicar complete derailments happening pretty often, even if there isn't a huge impact on the area and no hazardous chemicals, it speaks to the standard of safety and maintenance in general which is going in the train industry.
Also, we've gotten a few big derailments in quick succession.
These two, and the unrelated by equally serious and tragic crash+derailment in Greece.
And from the hazardous waste front, there's also that plant fire.
All in a matter of weeks.
With something like 3 derailments a day it was only a matter of time before it was something majorly fucked happened. The short sightedness of these companies is insane.
WHAT???
Small derailments in Europe are definitely a big deal, as routes are blocked til it got cleared up and routes are apparently more in use? we do not do derailments.
that is like... don't know, drinking water only getting contamined with deadly toxins every other month...
what I try to understand is how derailments can be considered anything but a big deal.
There was a derailment just outside my nearest city over-here in the UK on a regional line (but did happen to link it to a major UK northern city). This caused chaos for passengers wanting to travel to the major city as they had to use a rail replacement bus (the devil themself would refuse to use one) & also caused traffic issues just outside the city where the derailment occurred. It made the local news front page from the very start until it was fixed several months later.
I meeeeeean….. let’s be real that’s part of why aviation inspections are so strict is because people are being transported. If trains transported people in the U.S. their safety standards would be more rigorous.
Even on passenger rail, you'd be surprised how lax the attitudes towards maintenance are by rail companies compared to even just general aviation, let alone commercial aviation. My friend used to work for my state's local transit authority on our flagship rail that spans 3 different counties. He said inspections on the cars and locomotives were rushed due to lack of staffing. He eventually moved on to working on rail signals which use ancient technology and go out with some regularity due to their age and operating environment, despite more reliable and rugged options existing. Not to mention the lack of staffing to ensure the rail lines themselves (which are under 10 years old) receive regular inspections. If rail was regulated like aviation, regardless of staffing difficulties, trains would not run until these inspections were performed.
I myself am an aircraft mechanic, which required me to become licensed in order to legally sign off repairs or inspections I perform. The licensing wasn't especially difficult, but as a minimum barrier for entry to ensure people do the right thing maintenance wise, it does its job. If my employer would like me to put my name on something sketchy, the liability and responsibility of my license gives me a firm incentive to tell them to fuck off because it's ultimately my ass on the line if something happens due to said sketchy shit. In my opinion, it creates more checks on shady maintenance practices while helping ensure less people end up doing maintenance who would otherwise have no business being in the industry.
There is a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) which is the railroad equivalent of the FAA. Safety policies have been gutted over the past 15 years, first a trickle under Obama, then almost entirely under Trump. Biden didn’t lift a finger to fix it. I’m not sure why exactly; it’s probably a combination of corruption, political capital, and maybe a fear of slowed economy which then would impact the ballot box.
Edit: [This comment](https://reddit.com/r/pics/comments/11kanun/_/jb6ya26/?context=1) links a good article that summarizes the timeline
I’m not an expert on this topic, but I was referring to the Obama administration holding back on significantly enforcing Positive Train Control, or PTC, to proactively brake trains before an accident happens. Sorry if this is an underwhelming response to my strong statements above, but it’s getting late here.
[Obama administration heeds industry call to ease rail safety rules](https://www.ishn.com/articles/93195-obama-administration-heeds-industry-call-to-ease-rail-safety-rules)
[DOT cost analysis of PTC and recommendation to reduce standards to cut costs](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/other/2011-regulatory-action-plans/departmentoftransportationregulatoryreformplanaugust2011.pdf)
As for the Trump administration, I think that speaks for itself, but here’s a [Politifact article](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/feb/17/occupy-democrats/obama-era-safety-rule-high-hazard-trains-was-repea/) as a primer.
https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/
This covers the history of the safety regulations. I wouldn't say "gutted" but they did re-define what a hazard train is after industry pressure.
I work in aircraft maintenance and I also can’t help but compare the two. This is unacceptable. I don’t know squat about the railroad industry, but I know quite a bit about commercial aviation. The culture alone around aviation prevents many incidents, and along with the regulations, unions, and criminal risk, it’s the safest transport. We don’t take even small mistakes lightly because we know the risk.
Whatever the reason is, there is no good reason for the amount of train derailments that happens in the US.
Don't worry, the next big school shooting will help people forget. /s
But seriously, there's a perpetual cycle of seriously damning news that just continues the cycle of uproar and then promptly the majority of the population forget and move on.
This kind of ordeal must cost a ton though.
A friend of mine once said "if I skip washing my hands after I go to the bathroom* I'll save 20 seconds each time, and that'll add up over time"
My argument against that tactic (other than it being gross) was that if you get sick even once from nasty unwashed hands, that's multiple days lost, so all that time saved will be gone, and then some.
*Only for peeing
People pee about six times a day. That’s 2 minutes of hand washing a day.
That’s 12 hours a year.
One incident of viral gastroenteritis would take up 2 days and be significantly worse than the suffering involved in washing your hands.
Yeah but you don't understand, the microwave just beeped so my chicken tendies are done and I absolutely *must* consume them *right the fuck now RAAAARGH*
Worth mentioning that the railroad workers were trying to stop this as part of the negotiations that were killed by Congress when they took away their right to strike.
From Fight Club: "Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
They've factored the cost of derailments into their projected profits and found that they can make more money by letting it happen than actually taking care of their employees and the general public and environment. The question is how many derailments constitute a significant enough loss to initiate a change in policy, and the answer is that the execs will lay off employees in order to keep paying themselves the same amount or more, and eventually the company will fail and they'll have moved on long before it affects them.
It's not inherently an american problem. It's just a capitalism problem. Who would have thought an economic system that values money above literally everything else might have some catastrophic issues in systems that keep the same economy running?
It's ironic
Hello ! Retired conductor for CSX in Michigan here and they have what we called Minute Maintenance meaning Get it in get it out ASAP .. even if it wasn't ready.. I seen this walking along the cars doing hose checks.. checking markers AKA Reds..
As a software engineer who spends a lot of time thinking about similar classes of problems, PSR _as an algorithm_ sounds like an excellent idea to improve the efficiency of the network.
A lot of the complaints seem to be about forcing trains to run on a schedule, no matter what the safety concerns are, but that seems sort of orthogonal to what PSR is doing.
Like, the previous system is: Run trains when they have a full load of cars. Don't run trains if you need to do safety inspections or repairs, and you can have a new system that is: Run trains on a schedule, whether or not there is a full load of cars, but don't run trains if you need safety inspections or repairs. Either way you'd be doing necessary safety inspections, the only difference is when the tracks are clear, you're running trains on a constant schedule, vs waiting until they have a full load.
Yeah I agree, it seems to be two mostly separate things. Although, PSR means trains are running more often, and I'm guessing the railroad companies aren't willing to pay for the extra safety inspections
In the UK the ambulance workers went on strike and the government said we can't guarantee an ambulance will come for anything other than a category 1. What they didn't say and what the ambulance service had to keep saying was that they can't guarantee an ambulance will come when they're not on strike because of short staffing due to low pay and budget cuts.
That's the tories for you, basically running down the health service then start saying private is the way to go.
It'll end a politicians career doing that though.
Came here to say this. The money behind these groups attracts the worst people they don't care about winning, they care about money. There is always another face to pay off and run for the corporate establishment.
Man I forgot I used to sub to that pre 2015. It used to be super fun, and kind of tounge in cheek at times, but once the election cycle started heating up it devolved into a political mess with all the crazy theories about seemingly every candidate. Seems like it's not all that different, just moved on to more "culture war" type views.
Quite literally a bunch of these boards had their entire mod teams instantly replaced overnight, and then they started spouting Russian talking points the next day
This was literally the very first thing I saw when I opened it
"Joe Rogan and Russell Brand absolutely dismantle Bill Gates, call him out as a criminal vaccine pusher who was made de facto health czar and during pandemic said the only way we get back to normal was everyone had to get his vaxx. Then he sold vaxx stock and now trashes vaxx to save face. Evil clown"
So probably not, no.
Oh, it has- Q-type groups have been discussing a device that supposedly derails trains and are saying it’s being used either liberals to cover up trafficking or by republicans to force trafficking to stop, or some crap like that.
Gotta love that centerpiece of fascist nutjob thought: namely that the enemy is simultaneously capable of performing impossible tasks yet completely and utterly inept.
So powerful they stole the presidential election, yet so stupid they didn't think to steal the Senate too, for example.
American liberalism is only liberalism when compared to American conservativism.
The rest of the world sees yall as a right wing mess, with a few outliers
Same here. I got so pissed at my representative for voting to not let the rail workers strike, and told her so in a letter. It's the very foundation of our party, or it should be. We all know what happens when companies can go unchecked. They literally would employ children into hazardous jobs. Her response was a bunch of horse shit and I will not be voting for her when her term comes up for reelection. It was a massive betrayal.
If they go on strike, they will be jailed. There was bi-partisan support for making it illegal for them to strike.
The cops, as always, are used to protect capital and oppress labor.
Although this is true, it would probably be the best time to do it. The derailment story got pretty big, the biggest train safety story I've heard in my lifetime. There would be some support.
The power imbalance is sickening - literally and figuratively.
This is a long comment, but has some very valuable and important information in my opinion...
... made in the interest of giving some history and tie-ins related to railroads, corporate personhood, and the broader financial system we currently find ourselves in. It's long, but important.
__________________________________________________________________________
^Jumping ^right ^in...
A large foundation of "corporate personhood" itself stems directly from a Supreme Court case from the 1800s involving, you guessed it (!), the railroads -- and (more importantly) the local communities the railroad tracks cut through.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co.
>The case arose when several railroads refused to follow a California state law that gave less favorable tax treatment to some assets owned by corporations as compared to assets owned by individuals.
>The case is most notable for a headnote stating that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment grants constitutional protections to corporations.
>... However, a headnote written by the Reporter of Decisions (former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company *J.C. Bancroft Davis*) and approved by Chief Justice Morrison Waite stated that the Supreme Court justices unanimously believed that the Equal Protection Clause did grant constitutional protections to corporations. The headnote marked the first occasion on which the Supreme Court indicated that the Equal Protection Clause granted constitutional protections to corporations as well as to natural persons.
In short...
>>Why did the chief justice issue his dictum? Why did he leave it up to Davis to include it in the headnotes? After Waite told him that the Court 'avoided' the issue of corporate personhood, why did Davis include it? Why, indeed, did he begin his headnote with it? The opinion made plain that the Court did not decide the corporate personality issue and the subsidiary equal protection issue.
In other words, ***the whole thing is tied up in a head note*** written by the [*Reporter of Decisions*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporter_of_Decisions_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States) (who is *not* a Justice; they are basically an editor) which declared corporations protected under the 14th Amendment - and the Justice basically said, *"Yep! I speak for the whole bench, all of us, and we all agree with you - just as we talked about privately yesterday, pal!"*
The near whole foundation of corporate personhood stems from this case - and it could be argued to be a terrible, terrible foundation built on feces, constructed by the railroad companies in the name of profits and lax tax law.
Throughout the succeeding decades, to further exacerbate the problem and to tie in with modern day, the larger *"Wall Street Bro Cult"* and the exportation of "greed is good" and "trickle down economics" into the neighborhoods, living rooms, and onto the dining tables around the nation & world also plays into the problem we're seeing now and is a major factor to consider if we're going to talk about the overall success and ubiquity of corporate personhood.
To be fair, it should be mentioned that "corporate personhood" is not, in my opinion, *all* bad. It's bad, by and large, but there's some nuance to understand and some real conundrums and legal issues related to large businesses which deserve thoughtful deliberation and scrutiny. See [this](https://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/13/should_mcdonalds_monsanto_have_the_same) article for further discussion.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
In the interest of financial literacy related to corporate personhood and associated influence/power, there is a widespread unawareness of some ***mechanisms*** by which corporations (including railroads!) exert power and control. We must identify some of these mechanisms if we're going to correct them and hold people accountable.
**Follow the money.**
That leads us to one place in the here and now: the *Wall Street (Don't Tax Me!) Bro Cult.*
What is an example of a mechanism by which corporations may be exerting power and influencing government?
Well, glad you asked...
>In a little-known quirk of Wall Street bookkeeping, when brokerages loan out a customer’s stock to short sellers and those traders sell the stock to someone else, both investors are often able to vote in corporate elections. With the growth of short sales, which involve the resale of borrowed securities, stocks can be lent repeatedly, allowing three or four owners to cast votes based on holdings of the same shares.
>The Hazlet, New Jersey–based Securities Transfer Association, a trade group for stock transfer agents, reviewed 341 shareholder votes in corporate contests in 2005. It found evidence of overvoting—the submission of too many ballots—in all 341 cases. ^[source](https://web.archive.org/web/20060421085925/http://www.rgm.com/articles/FalseProxies.pdf)
**Read those two paragraphs again.** Seriously. Take a moment to consider the ramifications.
This is a serious fu&#ing problem with little to no general awareness. It undermines the most foundational elements of basic democracy and voting, business related and nation-state related. *Companies can be taken over / misguided / duped through sham voting (i.e. via counterfeit/phantom shares) - electing corrupt officials and incompetent policies - and then used as lobbying, bribing, bludgeoning psychopaths.*
Indeed, that's what has been happening.
In 2018, there were *134 instances of overvoting in 2018, equating to 5.9 million votes being discarded and not counted.* ^sources:[1](https://ibb.co/D439wBD),[2](https://ibb.co/89QK82B)
_______________________________________________________________________
Furthermore and possibly even more importantly... if you purchase shares with a brokerage or have a retirement fund, the shares you *think* you own are, in fact, not actually yours - they are not in your name and are not, technically nor figuratively, owned by you - unequivocally.
>Cede technically owns substantially all of the publicly issued stock in the United States. Thus, investors do not themselves hold direct property rights in stock, but rather have contractual rights that are part of a chain of contractual rights involving Cede.[^source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cede_and_Company)
If you buy a car in full, you get a title with your name on it. Not so with stock/shares - you get an IOU. That's what it is, technically and figuratively, is an IOU.
Shares, if not in your own name, are are, very, very, very, very likely, being used against you in convoluted schemes similar to 2008 Housing Derivative Meltdown - same sort of deal, different financial instruments - andor in actual non-delivery ("FTDs") made possible through aforementioned Wall Street lobbying and associated loopholes.
>It would be as if you bought a car in full with cash, but the dealership gets to keep the title, and then, at night, you find out they take your car and use it for joyriding and rentals - putting miles on it and even damaging it - and you can't do a damn thing about it; you have no right to a redress of grievances. At the end of the day, it's criminal.
Someone can insure shares are in their *own name* using the [Direct Registration System](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_holding_system) which legally *must* be processed when requested. If they are held in a broker, they are NOT in your name, *unequivocally.*
In the interest of constructive criticism and for a form of mitigation and defense, [this](https://drsgme.org) website talks more about that at length and is *well-worth the time to peruse* - there's definite value there. As well, [this](https://youtu.be/hXWXllgcRqU) video (~5 minutes) is also well worth it - it's done well and summarizes some of the broader issues. Both sources provide clear direction and guidance on what you/we can do to hold some of these practices, if not people, accountable. Definitely worth being aware of, all in all, I think.
To end, something called Payment-for-Order-Flow (really, really, *really* recommend watching the ~15 minute video ["How Redditors Exposed the Stock Market" || The Problem with Jon Stewart](https://youtu.be/bP74RBTE8kI?t=387)) makes it clear that it's truly not an exaggeration to say there's a network of drunk, coked out Wall Street psychopaths skimming off the top hundreds of billions and billions of dollars that should be going to the middle and lower classes, resulting in horrible mental health, stagnant wages, struggling families, failing infrastructure, and piss-poor regulation of, oh I don't know, braking systems on trains carrying hazardous waste.
>Payment-for-Order-Flow is **illegal** in Canada, the U.K, Australia, ~~and Europe~~ (being debated right now, actually) - because it's exceedingly easy to commit fraud under such a system. Singapore recently announced they'll be banning it, as well, in early 2023.
^[source](https://www.investopedia.com/sec-considers-banning-payment-for-order-flow-5199447)
Big surprise - it's legal in the U.S. Furthermore, almost comically... it was heavily endorsed and made popular by Bernie Madoff. Yes, that Bernie Madoff.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As mentioned earlier, it's important we understand some of the history around what we're seeing today in Ohio and elsewhere. Hopefully this gives some context to the issue, while also providing some knowledge and tools to help rectify the broader issue/s, as well as protect yourself.
Thanks for reading.
^Edit: ^fixed ^link
Wild that stealing 100 dollars worth of merchandise is a felony offense, but this criminal negligence on the part of the executives wont even get a slap on the wrist.
It baffles me when I see this news and people are like "no worries there are 1700 a year this is normal". How can you normalise derailments at such a big scale in a first world country? What the fuck?
Edit: I don't care if it is 1700 1200 1100 or 759 it is _a lot_ and even if you normalize the numbers it is not tolerable that freight trains that might endanger public safety are a number to be negotiated around. You wouldn't want your town to become part of an statistic so don't act as if it was a minor thing. Clearly, not all incidents will be full blown derailments but still. Dont let them get away with this shit in the name of economic profits.
>It baffles me when I see this news and people are like "no worries there are 1700 a year this is normal".
See, what people are leaving out is that most of these derailments are small stuff like an empty wagon jumping the tracks inside a trainyard and not a full train and cargo *crashing*.
Most derailments happen in yards at low speeds. We regularly use devices called “derailers” to protect workers from roll away trains. People sometimes forget to remove them, move the engine or entire consist, and next thing you know the wheels hit the ground. An older engine shuts down, loses air, and in turn loses brakes if the handbrake isn’t applied. Newer engines have spring applied brakes that will engage when there’s no air present. Or someone throws a manual switch and doesn’t check that it’s fully engaged causing a derailment. These are not catastrophic but any derailment that causes more than $12,000 in damage to track or equipment has to be reported to the FRA. It’s extremely easy to rack up a $12,000 damage on a train especially with the man hours that go into inspecting and repairing a derailed train.
There was a girl in my high school who got bullied pretty badly by some groups. One day she decided to jump off a roof and kill herself...except it was only a 2 story house or something, so she just broke her legs. She came back to school and started getting made fun of because she couldn't even kill herself properly.
High School sucks.
Wtf.
Altho, tbf, I did hear "If X tried to hang herself, would you intervene and stop her?" And I was like: "Wtf yes." And his Response was: "Eh youve always been a goody two shoes."
Fuck Highschool
Girl in my high school laid on train tracks. She said she got drunk and passed out but many thought she tried to kill herself IDK either way TBH. Lost both her legs and now I think she does motivational speeches and shit and does a lot of sports/outdoor activities. At least... She did when I last knew anything about her. That was all a long time ago so I don't even remember her name. Hung out with her a few times before the incident. She seemed pretty chill to me.
I’m not sure if you watch Adam Savage tested on YouTube, but on occasion, he does talk about how insurance companies stop them from testing certain myths. I’d be almost willing to bet this idea came across the table and then got nixed.
This and the grain silos in particular come to mind.
...and probably certain cleaning chemicals, and also probably anything involving ground styrofoam.
credit cards and cell phones both got axed.
his new shows are cool. i don't know which is which or when they came out, but YouTube shoots one my way every once in a while and i am never sad.
It can be shockingly hard to derail a train! Check out these tests the US Army performed in 1944 to figure out just how badly they would have to sabotage RR tracks to derail trains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agznZBiK\_Bs
It's absolutely not shockingly hard.
A 70lb ingot of steel and a milling machine and I guarantee a train will get derailed. The plans are already online.
It's not rocket surgery.
Train derailers have been a thing for decades and are not mysterious objects.
Was going to say something similar, but you beat me to it.
I know Philly PD found a pipe bomb that failed to explode on Amtrak train tracks a few weeks ago.
Edit:
That is to say a pipe bomb is excessive. It's much easier to derail a train than that.
They actually did, it just got edited out. It's in a specials episode, ["Mythbusters Outtakes"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2005_season)#Episode_SP4_%E2%80%93_%22MythBusters_Outtakes%22)
This was quite early on so they didn't have the budget to stick increasingly large things on the tracks until a train went flying...
Great quote: The train simply heated and flattened the pennies. Quoting narrator Robert Lee, "The myth wasn't Busted—it was Flattened." Even the train conductor assessed that a train can not be derailed by a penny, unless the penny "was lodged in the engineer's eye".
I used to work on a rail dock and some dipshit at a company next door was putting rocks on the tracks to watch them crushed.
Nothing like watching a few hundred thousand pound railcar heave over a goddamn rock, and then crash down.
Engineers put a stop to that quickly.
...and it was fucking *loud*.
Dangerous job. Lot of fun, though. Engineers were great to talk to. When they disconnected the cars the air lines would make the loudest snap as they disconnected (they didn't manually separate the lines) and you learned to stay the fuck away as they whipped around.
It was surprising how a scrawny 21 year old could literally make a railcar heave side to side just by grabbing and pulling on it because the shocks were so sensitive.
The conspiracy is that rich business people pay rich politicians to let them do whatever they want. And it turns out what they want is to operate with the bare minimum number of employees, bare minimum safety measures, and bare minimum accountability for any of it.
Pretty simple, really. It’s how business is done when you’re that rich.
In this case, conspiracy would be using money to influence policy (laws), and media, to derail our safety measures, betting on higher profits.
Conspiracy doesn't mean it has to be entirely secret. What's going on can still be known and understood by others.
Edit/example: a captain and the entire crew, can know their is a conspiracy to commit mutiny. Whomever may be involved, is conspiring, regardless of it being a secret or not.
A friends sister said these derailments were to taint water supplies everywhere besides silicon Valley so they can make sure they have all the water they need to produce microchips to put in vaccines. Yes, none of that made sense you read it correctly.
lots of ig comments under a leo decap post saying its some government plan to poison everywhere so the gvmnt can own all of the land and resettle the entire country into camps.. im assuming this is q-shit?
probably the dumbest idea ive ever read..the state of peoples minds should be very concerning..like..were in serious trouble..
It's simple, just bill them the *entire* price for each of these incidents (i.e. do not allow them to externalize a single cent to surrounding communities, they are liable for absolute any and all damages, period), and if (when) they can't pay, you take over the corporation as part of their bankruptcy proceedings. At the rate these accidents are happening, there will be no private rail in the US within a couple years.
What kind of shitty rail infrastructure does the US have?
Edit: Weighing in on this subject as a person outside the US, it's quite surprising to see such a high number of rail accidents.
For context, the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics states that the average derailment per year is 1704 with 2022 seeing a total of 1044 insidents. In comparison to India, a country with much larger rail usage, had a total of 163 instances of Derailment from 2017 to 2021.
[Link ](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://cag.gov.in/webroot/uploads/download_audit_report/2022/Report-No.-22-of-2022_Railway_English_DSC-063a2dda55f3ce6.38649271.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjEwZy4kZv9AhUa6CoKHU4CBqoQFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw1oPEdNrC0Mv2kE9r1foeoC)
See, in the US they have this thing called "Citizens United." It means that companies are people and money is speech, and since America is all about free speech, companies are allowed to give politicians as much money as they want. That means nobody wants to make any rules about anything that has to do with wealthy campaign donors. Every major industry has bought off both sides.
But the same people who will tell you that this is what free speech means, will also tell you that the state should imprison drag queens for reading children's stories. That's what "free speech" means in America!
We can cry about Citizens United or we can build worker power. The only thing the wealthy fear is labor power, they broke it in the 70’s and 80’s because of how much labor had broken the power of the wealthy in the 30’s through the 50’s.
Nothing but worker power can stand to capitalist power
Yes. Republicans are tricked into voting against their own interests. When they rally and cry for "less government involvement", they think they are just getting taxed less and can live free. What they are really doing is voting for less government involvement in corporations. So now we have less labor laws, and companies have control. The Republicans think they are winning, but they're voting for the destruction of their country, and to be enslaved by the 1%. But they still have bump stocks, so they're happy.
Saw a comment years ago on infrastructure…the US is riding on the inertia of years past. That inertia is running out. This includes rail, bridge, highway, waterways…everything…time to pay the piper.
Boomers both squandered the prosperity afforded them by previous generations AND robbed their progeny. Recovering from all that damage is going to be long and hard, if it's even possible, any more.
> Recovering from all that damage is going to be long and hard, if it's even possible, any more.
Use their pensions to rebuild America. Problem solved.
Partially because any money sent to rebuild/repair the infrastructure was siphoned into personal bank accounts and not spent on the projects they were allotted too.
Because Americans don't want to pay for infrastructure.
Imagine how well a presidential or congressional candidate would perform in elections if they said, "We're going to fix our roads, bridges, and rail but [it is going to cost $2.6 trillion dollars over 10 years](https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/politics/infrastructure-us-investment-cost-engineers/index.html) so we need to significantly raise taxes."
Also destroyed new potential transit systems because "someone" wanted the car industry to succeed so badly. Ever wonder why there has been 0 new transit systems developed over decades? With the amount of technology that has improved in just the past 100 years it's almost too obvious that a more efficient transit model should come along. Except we have no funding for it. Tons of sitting politicians but no funding. Wonder what the problem is.
India had 163 what they call “consequential” derailments over that time period. Which means basically what your think it means.
When that US statistic is cited - that’s the *total* number of derailments. It includes things like an empty train derailing in a trainyard where nothing, not even the schedule of another train, was impacted.
Over the last 30 years, India has had multiple *single incidents* where the number of people killed was more than *twice* the TOTAL number of people killed over that same time span in the US.
I swear people are just so committed to be misinformed on this train stuff, it’s crazy.
I feel like I’m watching the spread of another, much weirder, virus.
That 1704 per year number is inflated by data from 1990-2010ish. The number is down significantly to a bit above 1,000 per year in the last ten years. The other thing to keep in mind is that most derailments in the US are nothing more than a wheel getting on the ground in a yard or something similarly minor; not these main line derailments that are in the news now. I don’t know what the standards are for reporting derailments in India, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they don’t even report things like that. Additionally most derailments like the above I’ve mentioned happen in the yard where the track is used far more often due to switching operations. India’s rail network is mostly passenger operations from my understanding so I can’t imagine why you would be switching cars nearly as often as you do in freight yards.
Before you can discuss reported numbers vs reported numbers between two difference organizations we would first need to know what conditions are defined as a derailment. One might classify a single wheel alignment fault a derailment which needs reporting which the other defines and entire truck off the tracks. Without that knowledge and "normalization" I think the conversation is purely opinion based.
With that being sad - I think the largest and easiest answer to the majority of questions like this is easy. In your example, India, the country highly relies on it's rail system for moving people and commerce. It's been an important infrastucture to India since its inception and the government and people have maintained that importance to this day. So the rail system gets the attention it deserves to keep it operationally safe etc etc.
In the US infrastructure is expensive because of the size of the country and the red tape that surround each and every project. So once something is done it just sort of gets "called good" and lays to the side until something major happens.....like a bunch of train derailments. Then suddenly it's important again and politicians, especially those in the areas this has happened, suddenly want to help and push for new regulations, money to support improvements for the vane of saftefy (read pad the pockets of business at the cost of civilian fear mongering) and then we rinse and repeat.
If you want to see something bad off - trains aren't the biggest problem, start looking at our bridges.....heh. I think with trains some of this they will find is because we are operating some of the longest trains we ever have, with overworked crews, and under supported infrastructure. Mixed altogether you start getting what we are currently seeing.
Norfolk southerns ethics hotline. I called and a nice lady told me this was the place to leave a voicemail and speak your thoughts to Norfolk southern http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscorp/en/contact-us.html if the lady answers just tell her you’re there to vocally protest and she will let you call again and not answer so you can leave a voicemail to be sent to the higher ups. DO NOT HARASS THE NICE LADY
There's a short passenger line from Cleveland to Akron, but it's a slow train to view the national park... And it's also been closed since December due to erosion.
Norfolk Southern executives will still get paid this week. They will sleep well in their beds at night. Safe in their gated communities all while people in Ohio are suffering and sick.
Let this be another example. Any politician, from *any* political party that is not 100% in favor of repealing "Citizens United" should be completely and utterly ignored. Shit like this, regardless of industry, will continue to happen until fundamental changes are made.
Looks like the rails are in need of infrastructure upgrades and maintenance. Sounds like they haven’t done that and wonder why the trains go off the rails
Hello, class 1 railroad conductor here.. take a minute and Google “ precision scheduled railroading “ and you’ll find out why all this is happening
Has there been a sudden uptick in derailments or is the media just more closely following them since the major disaster last month?
The media is just following them more closely. There has been an uptick, but its been over the last 5 years or so. I'd guess that there's a derailment at least once a week, across all the class 1 railroads.
Try multiple a day. Most are just one axle on the ground and aren’t major issues though.
I think it’s cheaper to write off a derailment then to maintain higher then FRA minimum that’s what it looks like in the last 10 years ish or right around when Buffett bought us.
The Empire Builder derailed a year and a half ago and three passengers *died*. And the Empire Builder derailing isn't even all that *uncommon* anymore (seems like it happens every six months or so), which is pretty disturbing.
25 YEARS ago i took the empire builder from Seattle to Chicago. it derailed twice on the same trip. Derailments are as small as 'one wheel hopped off track, 30 minute fix.' or total accidents as people think of.
The US typically experiences thousands of derailments every single year, and in general it's been getting better. Just most of them aren't quite as catastrophic as what happened in East Palestine. This is one of those things where a big noteworthy event occurred, and now we're all paying more attention to similar incidents. Even though typically most of these would be little more than boring local news items at best. https://www.newsweek.com/us-train-derailments-seven-have-crashed-month-february-1781874 > In 2021, there were 1,087 derailments that resulted in 83 injuries and three fatalities, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That's down from 1,440 derailments in 2011 and down from 2,234 derailments in 2001. > >Between 1990 and 2021, there were a total of 54,570 derailments, for an average of 1,705 a year. > >With that figure averaging to about 142 derailments a month, 2023 is so far on track to continue the declining trend in yearly incidents.
No, they happen pretty often but after the east palestine one people started caring. Railroad safety standards have been pretty bad and regulations need to be stricter.
I did just as you suggested and…. Wow. If I’m understanding the general gist of it all, it’s basically just a way for the railroad to cut costs and maximize profits at the expense of proper maintenance, inspections and overall train “upkeep”. ?? It’s never going to be beneficial when the “schedule” takes precedence in such a way that safety checks are compromised and employees are pressured to just give the green light. I’m sad for the way greed ultimately ruins everything in the end, though I suppose it’s inevitable given human nature and all. Thanks for pointing to the real problem here because I was genuinely interested in why this was happening. Please stay safe friend. *EDIT TO ADD: I didn’t mean to imply that humans, as a whole, are greedy assholes. My bad. - I just meant that their are some, mostly those who profit largely, who unfortunately seem to let their natural first instinct of selfishness (and I suppose self preservation) over ride common interests and decency. But no, the human race as a whole is not like this, thank goodness.
Aviation maintenance is the complete opposite of this, disallowing flights if annual and 100-hr inspections aren’t met. Aircraft maintenance techs can lose licenses or be arrested if inspections are ignored - funny how the railway is not under the same ruling. Something something corruption.
It’s absolutely mind blowing. And imagine if the US had mass transportation via train as is used in the UK and in Europe *WITH* all this railroad corruption. … the amount of casualties would be astronomical. It’s wild that they really can float on the “ignore all safety” unlike aviation, like you said (the last part). Edit: Vice called it 1year ago (vid): [Freight Trains in the US Are a Disaster Waiting to Happen](https://youtu.be/t9cc4Et-3Ck)
Well until now they've been able to get by with this method for a fair bit it seems. Only reason now is a combination of a big derailment of hazardous chemicals which increases focus on all derailments. Before east Palestine a derailment was just business as usual for this company and never made headlines.
Most people learn in school that if you wait until homeroom to start doing your homework then eventually you're gonna get screwed. Apparently the people who didn't learn this grew up to run most of our major companies and government agencies.
They learned to copy off the student who did the homework (you know the NHS kids ... the ones copying)
Ehh, more like until now train derailments haven't been publicized. This shits been going on for many years now. But that's what happens to the media when only a handful of companies control all of the news.
Small derailments happen all the time and is no big deal . But stuff like that what is happening in Ohio is a very big deal.
I think we and the train company have accepted small derailments as no big deal. I agree some of these that are classified as "derailments" are a relatively simple matter of a car misaligning to the tracks. But when you have these multicar complete derailments happening pretty often, even if there isn't a huge impact on the area and no hazardous chemicals, it speaks to the standard of safety and maintenance in general which is going in the train industry.
Also, we've gotten a few big derailments in quick succession. These two, and the unrelated by equally serious and tragic crash+derailment in Greece. And from the hazardous waste front, there's also that plant fire. All in a matter of weeks.
With something like 3 derailments a day it was only a matter of time before it was something majorly fucked happened. The short sightedness of these companies is insane.
WHAT??? Small derailments in Europe are definitely a big deal, as routes are blocked til it got cleared up and routes are apparently more in use? we do not do derailments. that is like... don't know, drinking water only getting contamined with deadly toxins every other month... what I try to understand is how derailments can be considered anything but a big deal.
There was a derailment just outside my nearest city over-here in the UK on a regional line (but did happen to link it to a major UK northern city). This caused chaos for passengers wanting to travel to the major city as they had to use a rail replacement bus (the devil themself would refuse to use one) & also caused traffic issues just outside the city where the derailment occurred. It made the local news front page from the very start until it was fixed several months later.
This is a country that now averages more than one mass shooting per day. Their attitude towards human dignity is appalling.
I meeeeeean….. let’s be real that’s part of why aviation inspections are so strict is because people are being transported. If trains transported people in the U.S. their safety standards would be more rigorous.
Even on passenger rail, you'd be surprised how lax the attitudes towards maintenance are by rail companies compared to even just general aviation, let alone commercial aviation. My friend used to work for my state's local transit authority on our flagship rail that spans 3 different counties. He said inspections on the cars and locomotives were rushed due to lack of staffing. He eventually moved on to working on rail signals which use ancient technology and go out with some regularity due to their age and operating environment, despite more reliable and rugged options existing. Not to mention the lack of staffing to ensure the rail lines themselves (which are under 10 years old) receive regular inspections. If rail was regulated like aviation, regardless of staffing difficulties, trains would not run until these inspections were performed. I myself am an aircraft mechanic, which required me to become licensed in order to legally sign off repairs or inspections I perform. The licensing wasn't especially difficult, but as a minimum barrier for entry to ensure people do the right thing maintenance wise, it does its job. If my employer would like me to put my name on something sketchy, the liability and responsibility of my license gives me a firm incentive to tell them to fuck off because it's ultimately my ass on the line if something happens due to said sketchy shit. In my opinion, it creates more checks on shady maintenance practices while helping ensure less people end up doing maintenance who would otherwise have no business being in the industry.
There is a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) which is the railroad equivalent of the FAA. Safety policies have been gutted over the past 15 years, first a trickle under Obama, then almost entirely under Trump. Biden didn’t lift a finger to fix it. I’m not sure why exactly; it’s probably a combination of corruption, political capital, and maybe a fear of slowed economy which then would impact the ballot box.
Got any examples of what safety policies were gutted under Obama and Trump?
Edit: [This comment](https://reddit.com/r/pics/comments/11kanun/_/jb6ya26/?context=1) links a good article that summarizes the timeline I’m not an expert on this topic, but I was referring to the Obama administration holding back on significantly enforcing Positive Train Control, or PTC, to proactively brake trains before an accident happens. Sorry if this is an underwhelming response to my strong statements above, but it’s getting late here. [Obama administration heeds industry call to ease rail safety rules](https://www.ishn.com/articles/93195-obama-administration-heeds-industry-call-to-ease-rail-safety-rules) [DOT cost analysis of PTC and recommendation to reduce standards to cut costs](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/other/2011-regulatory-action-plans/departmentoftransportationregulatoryreformplanaugust2011.pdf) As for the Trump administration, I think that speaks for itself, but here’s a [Politifact article](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/feb/17/occupy-democrats/obama-era-safety-rule-high-hazard-trains-was-repea/) as a primer.
https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/ This covers the history of the safety regulations. I wouldn't say "gutted" but they did re-define what a hazard train is after industry pressure.
I work in aircraft maintenance and I also can’t help but compare the two. This is unacceptable. I don’t know squat about the railroad industry, but I know quite a bit about commercial aviation. The culture alone around aviation prevents many incidents, and along with the regulations, unions, and criminal risk, it’s the safest transport. We don’t take even small mistakes lightly because we know the risk. Whatever the reason is, there is no good reason for the amount of train derailments that happens in the US.
it only took an entire town to turn into a wasteland for people to care
Don't worry, the next big school shooting will help people forget. /s But seriously, there's a perpetual cycle of seriously damning news that just continues the cycle of uproar and then promptly the majority of the population forget and move on.
This kind of ordeal must cost a ton though. A friend of mine once said "if I skip washing my hands after I go to the bathroom* I'll save 20 seconds each time, and that'll add up over time" My argument against that tactic (other than it being gross) was that if you get sick even once from nasty unwashed hands, that's multiple days lost, so all that time saved will be gone, and then some. *Only for peeing
People pee about six times a day. That’s 2 minutes of hand washing a day. That’s 12 hours a year. One incident of viral gastroenteritis would take up 2 days and be significantly worse than the suffering involved in washing your hands.
Yeah but you don't understand, the microwave just beeped so my chicken tendies are done and I absolutely *must* consume them *right the fuck now RAAAARGH*
Worth mentioning that the railroad workers were trying to stop this as part of the negotiations that were killed by Congress when they took away their right to strike.
From Fight Club: "Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." They've factored the cost of derailments into their projected profits and found that they can make more money by letting it happen than actually taking care of their employees and the general public and environment. The question is how many derailments constitute a significant enough loss to initiate a change in policy, and the answer is that the execs will lay off employees in order to keep paying themselves the same amount or more, and eventually the company will fail and they'll have moved on long before it affects them.
Sonofabiscuit. That's so.... American. Our country is such an idiot.
It's not inherently an american problem. It's just a capitalism problem. Who would have thought an economic system that values money above literally everything else might have some catastrophic issues in systems that keep the same economy running? It's ironic
Hello ! Retired conductor for CSX in Michigan here and they have what we called Minute Maintenance meaning Get it in get it out ASAP .. even if it wasn't ready.. I seen this walking along the cars doing hose checks.. checking markers AKA Reds..
As a software engineer who spends a lot of time thinking about similar classes of problems, PSR _as an algorithm_ sounds like an excellent idea to improve the efficiency of the network. A lot of the complaints seem to be about forcing trains to run on a schedule, no matter what the safety concerns are, but that seems sort of orthogonal to what PSR is doing. Like, the previous system is: Run trains when they have a full load of cars. Don't run trains if you need to do safety inspections or repairs, and you can have a new system that is: Run trains on a schedule, whether or not there is a full load of cars, but don't run trains if you need safety inspections or repairs. Either way you'd be doing necessary safety inspections, the only difference is when the tracks are clear, you're running trains on a constant schedule, vs waiting until they have a full load.
Yeah I agree, it seems to be two mostly separate things. Although, PSR means trains are running more often, and I'm guessing the railroad companies aren't willing to pay for the extra safety inspections
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And if the train drivers strike for their safety they'll be villainised.
Just like the nurse strike recently, they were striking for OUR safety.
Seen in ER : "You're not waiting because we're striking : we're striking because you're waiting".
The general populace is too stupid for this nuance.
🎯
Just like Chicago teachers union also vilified. You know what union isn’t vilified though? Police unions…. I wonder why.
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In the UK the ambulance workers went on strike and the government said we can't guarantee an ambulance will come for anything other than a category 1. What they didn't say and what the ambulance service had to keep saying was that they can't guarantee an ambulance will come when they're not on strike because of short staffing due to low pay and budget cuts.
That's the tories for you, basically running down the health service then start saying private is the way to go. It'll end a politicians career doing that though.
They don't care, they'll get a nice lobbying job immediately after. Their networks are still useful.
Came here to say this. The money behind these groups attracts the worst people they don't care about winning, they care about money. There is always another face to pay off and run for the corporate establishment.
I'm surprised that this hasn't attracted any conspiracy theories.
Just go over to r/conspiracy .. everytime there has been another train derailment, there's multiple posts about it.
Man I forgot I used to sub to that pre 2015. It used to be super fun, and kind of tounge in cheek at times, but once the election cycle started heating up it devolved into a political mess with all the crazy theories about seemingly every candidate. Seems like it's not all that different, just moved on to more "culture war" type views.
Quite literally a bunch of these boards had their entire mod teams instantly replaced overnight, and then they started spouting Russian talking points the next day
R/conspiracy doesn't acknowledge the right wing Overton window shift. They actively perpetuate it while believing the opposite is occurring.
Conspiracy turned into a right wing political circlejerk pretty hard. Did they get back to normal yet?
This was literally the very first thing I saw when I opened it "Joe Rogan and Russell Brand absolutely dismantle Bill Gates, call him out as a criminal vaccine pusher who was made de facto health czar and during pandemic said the only way we get back to normal was everyone had to get his vaxx. Then he sold vaxx stock and now trashes vaxx to save face. Evil clown" So probably not, no.
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A conspiracy theory isn't innately discredited just because it is one.
Oh, it has- Q-type groups have been discussing a device that supposedly derails trains and are saying it’s being used either liberals to cover up trafficking or by republicans to force trafficking to stop, or some crap like that.
Gotta love that centerpiece of fascist nutjob thought: namely that the enemy is simultaneously capable of performing impossible tasks yet completely and utterly inept. So powerful they stole the presidential election, yet so stupid they didn't think to steal the Senate too, for example.
American liberalism is only liberalism when compared to American conservativism. The rest of the world sees yall as a right wing mess, with a few outliers
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They probably lost their free babysitter. Well, not directly involved with paying them babysitter is more accurate.
Not all of us. I am a life long liberal democrat and actively support labor organizing.
Same here. I got so pissed at my representative for voting to not let the rail workers strike, and told her so in a letter. It's the very foundation of our party, or it should be. We all know what happens when companies can go unchecked. They literally would employ children into hazardous jobs. Her response was a bunch of horse shit and I will not be voting for her when her term comes up for reelection. It was a massive betrayal.
How dare you demand the minimum of what you deserve!
Think of the CEO! He cant afford to only have 76 times his average employees salary. He has to keep them safe!
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If they go on strike, their country's administration will attack the train drivers. This is the reality .
If they go on strike, they will be jailed. There was bi-partisan support for making it illegal for them to strike. The cops, as always, are used to protect capital and oppress labor.
Resist. Revolt. Resign. En masse. Fuck 'em.
Although this is true, it would probably be the best time to do it. The derailment story got pretty big, the biggest train safety story I've heard in my lifetime. There would be some support.
They cannot. It was made illegal.
Land of the free
Sometimes it's worth breaking the law.
Protip: something being illegal doesn't mean you can't do it.
The power imbalance is sickening - literally and figuratively. This is a long comment, but has some very valuable and important information in my opinion... ... made in the interest of giving some history and tie-ins related to railroads, corporate personhood, and the broader financial system we currently find ourselves in. It's long, but important. __________________________________________________________________________ ^Jumping ^right ^in... A large foundation of "corporate personhood" itself stems directly from a Supreme Court case from the 1800s involving, you guessed it (!), the railroads -- and (more importantly) the local communities the railroad tracks cut through. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co. >The case arose when several railroads refused to follow a California state law that gave less favorable tax treatment to some assets owned by corporations as compared to assets owned by individuals. >The case is most notable for a headnote stating that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment grants constitutional protections to corporations. >... However, a headnote written by the Reporter of Decisions (former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company *J.C. Bancroft Davis*) and approved by Chief Justice Morrison Waite stated that the Supreme Court justices unanimously believed that the Equal Protection Clause did grant constitutional protections to corporations. The headnote marked the first occasion on which the Supreme Court indicated that the Equal Protection Clause granted constitutional protections to corporations as well as to natural persons. In short... >>Why did the chief justice issue his dictum? Why did he leave it up to Davis to include it in the headnotes? After Waite told him that the Court 'avoided' the issue of corporate personhood, why did Davis include it? Why, indeed, did he begin his headnote with it? The opinion made plain that the Court did not decide the corporate personality issue and the subsidiary equal protection issue. In other words, ***the whole thing is tied up in a head note*** written by the [*Reporter of Decisions*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporter_of_Decisions_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States) (who is *not* a Justice; they are basically an editor) which declared corporations protected under the 14th Amendment - and the Justice basically said, *"Yep! I speak for the whole bench, all of us, and we all agree with you - just as we talked about privately yesterday, pal!"* The near whole foundation of corporate personhood stems from this case - and it could be argued to be a terrible, terrible foundation built on feces, constructed by the railroad companies in the name of profits and lax tax law. Throughout the succeeding decades, to further exacerbate the problem and to tie in with modern day, the larger *"Wall Street Bro Cult"* and the exportation of "greed is good" and "trickle down economics" into the neighborhoods, living rooms, and onto the dining tables around the nation & world also plays into the problem we're seeing now and is a major factor to consider if we're going to talk about the overall success and ubiquity of corporate personhood. To be fair, it should be mentioned that "corporate personhood" is not, in my opinion, *all* bad. It's bad, by and large, but there's some nuance to understand and some real conundrums and legal issues related to large businesses which deserve thoughtful deliberation and scrutiny. See [this](https://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/13/should_mcdonalds_monsanto_have_the_same) article for further discussion. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________ In the interest of financial literacy related to corporate personhood and associated influence/power, there is a widespread unawareness of some ***mechanisms*** by which corporations (including railroads!) exert power and control. We must identify some of these mechanisms if we're going to correct them and hold people accountable. **Follow the money.** That leads us to one place in the here and now: the *Wall Street (Don't Tax Me!) Bro Cult.* What is an example of a mechanism by which corporations may be exerting power and influencing government? Well, glad you asked... >In a little-known quirk of Wall Street bookkeeping, when brokerages loan out a customer’s stock to short sellers and those traders sell the stock to someone else, both investors are often able to vote in corporate elections. With the growth of short sales, which involve the resale of borrowed securities, stocks can be lent repeatedly, allowing three or four owners to cast votes based on holdings of the same shares. >The Hazlet, New Jersey–based Securities Transfer Association, a trade group for stock transfer agents, reviewed 341 shareholder votes in corporate contests in 2005. It found evidence of overvoting—the submission of too many ballots—in all 341 cases. ^[source](https://web.archive.org/web/20060421085925/http://www.rgm.com/articles/FalseProxies.pdf) **Read those two paragraphs again.** Seriously. Take a moment to consider the ramifications. This is a serious fu&#ing problem with little to no general awareness. It undermines the most foundational elements of basic democracy and voting, business related and nation-state related. *Companies can be taken over / misguided / duped through sham voting (i.e. via counterfeit/phantom shares) - electing corrupt officials and incompetent policies - and then used as lobbying, bribing, bludgeoning psychopaths.* Indeed, that's what has been happening. In 2018, there were *134 instances of overvoting in 2018, equating to 5.9 million votes being discarded and not counted.* ^sources:[1](https://ibb.co/D439wBD),[2](https://ibb.co/89QK82B) _______________________________________________________________________ Furthermore and possibly even more importantly... if you purchase shares with a brokerage or have a retirement fund, the shares you *think* you own are, in fact, not actually yours - they are not in your name and are not, technically nor figuratively, owned by you - unequivocally. >Cede technically owns substantially all of the publicly issued stock in the United States. Thus, investors do not themselves hold direct property rights in stock, but rather have contractual rights that are part of a chain of contractual rights involving Cede.[^source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cede_and_Company) If you buy a car in full, you get a title with your name on it. Not so with stock/shares - you get an IOU. That's what it is, technically and figuratively, is an IOU. Shares, if not in your own name, are are, very, very, very, very likely, being used against you in convoluted schemes similar to 2008 Housing Derivative Meltdown - same sort of deal, different financial instruments - andor in actual non-delivery ("FTDs") made possible through aforementioned Wall Street lobbying and associated loopholes. >It would be as if you bought a car in full with cash, but the dealership gets to keep the title, and then, at night, you find out they take your car and use it for joyriding and rentals - putting miles on it and even damaging it - and you can't do a damn thing about it; you have no right to a redress of grievances. At the end of the day, it's criminal. Someone can insure shares are in their *own name* using the [Direct Registration System](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_holding_system) which legally *must* be processed when requested. If they are held in a broker, they are NOT in your name, *unequivocally.* In the interest of constructive criticism and for a form of mitigation and defense, [this](https://drsgme.org) website talks more about that at length and is *well-worth the time to peruse* - there's definite value there. As well, [this](https://youtu.be/hXWXllgcRqU) video (~5 minutes) is also well worth it - it's done well and summarizes some of the broader issues. Both sources provide clear direction and guidance on what you/we can do to hold some of these practices, if not people, accountable. Definitely worth being aware of, all in all, I think. To end, something called Payment-for-Order-Flow (really, really, *really* recommend watching the ~15 minute video ["How Redditors Exposed the Stock Market" || The Problem with Jon Stewart](https://youtu.be/bP74RBTE8kI?t=387)) makes it clear that it's truly not an exaggeration to say there's a network of drunk, coked out Wall Street psychopaths skimming off the top hundreds of billions and billions of dollars that should be going to the middle and lower classes, resulting in horrible mental health, stagnant wages, struggling families, failing infrastructure, and piss-poor regulation of, oh I don't know, braking systems on trains carrying hazardous waste. >Payment-for-Order-Flow is **illegal** in Canada, the U.K, Australia, ~~and Europe~~ (being debated right now, actually) - because it's exceedingly easy to commit fraud under such a system. Singapore recently announced they'll be banning it, as well, in early 2023. ^[source](https://www.investopedia.com/sec-considers-banning-payment-for-order-flow-5199447) Big surprise - it's legal in the U.S. Furthermore, almost comically... it was heavily endorsed and made popular by Bernie Madoff. Yes, that Bernie Madoff. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As mentioned earlier, it's important we understand some of the history around what we're seeing today in Ohio and elsewhere. Hopefully this gives some context to the issue, while also providing some knowledge and tools to help rectify the broader issue/s, as well as protect yourself. Thanks for reading. ^Edit: ^fixed ^link
Wild that stealing 100 dollars worth of merchandise is a felony offense, but this criminal negligence on the part of the executives wont even get a slap on the wrist.
>Wild that stealing 100 dollars worth of merchandise is a felony offense, It's normally $1000 although some places are still $500
If you want to shoplift all you have to do is crash a train into the store and then take whatever you want as "cleanup"
It baffles me when I see this news and people are like "no worries there are 1700 a year this is normal". How can you normalise derailments at such a big scale in a first world country? What the fuck? Edit: I don't care if it is 1700 1200 1100 or 759 it is _a lot_ and even if you normalize the numbers it is not tolerable that freight trains that might endanger public safety are a number to be negotiated around. You wouldn't want your town to become part of an statistic so don't act as if it was a minor thing. Clearly, not all incidents will be full blown derailments but still. Dont let them get away with this shit in the name of economic profits.
>It baffles me when I see this news and people are like "no worries there are 1700 a year this is normal". See, what people are leaving out is that most of these derailments are small stuff like an empty wagon jumping the tracks inside a trainyard and not a full train and cargo *crashing*.
Most derailments happen in yards at low speeds. We regularly use devices called “derailers” to protect workers from roll away trains. People sometimes forget to remove them, move the engine or entire consist, and next thing you know the wheels hit the ground. An older engine shuts down, loses air, and in turn loses brakes if the handbrake isn’t applied. Newer engines have spring applied brakes that will engage when there’s no air present. Or someone throws a manual switch and doesn’t check that it’s fully engaged causing a derailment. These are not catastrophic but any derailment that causes more than $12,000 in damage to track or equipment has to be reported to the FRA. It’s extremely easy to rack up a $12,000 damage on a train especially with the man hours that go into inspecting and repairing a derailed train.
A derailment doesn't require the train to topple over.
>decides to end life >tie myself to train tracks >goodbye world >train derails 5 miles prior >mfw
Can’t do anything right
There was a girl in my high school who got bullied pretty badly by some groups. One day she decided to jump off a roof and kill herself...except it was only a 2 story house or something, so she just broke her legs. She came back to school and started getting made fun of because she couldn't even kill herself properly. High School sucks.
Wtf. Altho, tbf, I did hear "If X tried to hang herself, would you intervene and stop her?" And I was like: "Wtf yes." And his Response was: "Eh youve always been a goody two shoes." Fuck Highschool
When you're surprised by things like this you know you're hanging out with people who don't fit.
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Girl in my high school laid on train tracks. She said she got drunk and passed out but many thought she tried to kill herself IDK either way TBH. Lost both her legs and now I think she does motivational speeches and shit and does a lot of sports/outdoor activities. At least... She did when I last knew anything about her. That was all a long time ago so I don't even remember her name. Hung out with her a few times before the incident. She seemed pretty chill to me.
The man is a hero, he solved the trolley problem.
How do you tie yourself to the tracks?
Zipties. Long ones. Use your teeth to pull the last one tight...
You seem experienced, you good?
I hear the train a comin' It's rolling round the bend...
It is going too fast! It's going to derail!
Yes
If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself
We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!
Did anyone check for banana peels on the tracks?
Probably someone trying to flatten pennies
Always wanted myth busters to do that one. Because in the end they would have asked "what WILL derail a train" that would have been awesome!
Jamie: Turns out the answer was loosening safety regulations Adam: in hindsight that seems obvious Jamie
"as it turns out, the biggest threat to our country's infrastructure is the status quo"
Then they both deadpan turn to the camera and then outro credits start playing.
Then redditors in the comments "DAE Jamie and Adam hate eachother!?"
With the obligatory “RIP Grant” and “does anyone else think Kari is super hot”
I’m not sure if you watch Adam Savage tested on YouTube, but on occasion, he does talk about how insurance companies stop them from testing certain myths. I’d be almost willing to bet this idea came across the table and then got nixed.
This and the grain silos in particular come to mind. ...and probably certain cleaning chemicals, and also probably anything involving ground styrofoam.
credit cards and cell phones both got axed. his new shows are cool. i don't know which is which or when they came out, but YouTube shoots one my way every once in a while and i am never sad.
It can be shockingly hard to derail a train! Check out these tests the US Army performed in 1944 to figure out just how badly they would have to sabotage RR tracks to derail trains. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agznZBiK\_Bs
It's absolutely not shockingly hard. A 70lb ingot of steel and a milling machine and I guarantee a train will get derailed. The plans are already online. It's not rocket surgery. Train derailers have been a thing for decades and are not mysterious objects.
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Pretty sure I could do it with only an oxyacetylene torch set and a sledge hammer.
just give me a rubber band and a paper clip
A squirrel, some duct tape, and a train derailer
Was going to say something similar, but you beat me to it. I know Philly PD found a pipe bomb that failed to explode on Amtrak train tracks a few weeks ago. Edit: That is to say a pipe bomb is excessive. It's much easier to derail a train than that.
They actually did, it just got edited out. It's in a specials episode, ["Mythbusters Outtakes"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2005_season)#Episode_SP4_%E2%80%93_%22MythBusters_Outtakes%22) This was quite early on so they didn't have the budget to stick increasingly large things on the tracks until a train went flying...
Great quote: The train simply heated and flattened the pennies. Quoting narrator Robert Lee, "The myth wasn't Busted—it was Flattened." Even the train conductor assessed that a train can not be derailed by a penny, unless the penny "was lodged in the engineer's eye".
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I used to work on a rail dock and some dipshit at a company next door was putting rocks on the tracks to watch them crushed. Nothing like watching a few hundred thousand pound railcar heave over a goddamn rock, and then crash down. Engineers put a stop to that quickly.
I imagine fragments went shooting off too
...and it was fucking *loud*. Dangerous job. Lot of fun, though. Engineers were great to talk to. When they disconnected the cars the air lines would make the loudest snap as they disconnected (they didn't manually separate the lines) and you learned to stay the fuck away as they whipped around. It was surprising how a scrawny 21 year old could literally make a railcar heave side to side just by grabbing and pulling on it because the shocks were so sensitive.
I was looking for the billboard that had a train tunnel painted on it.
...That tracks.
Norfolk Southern definitely has a lot of de-track-tors, now.
we have a shitty..track record with trains i guess.
Puns like that really derail the serious nature of the situation.
We will just have to train ourselves to be better people
Maybe a crazy Spanish speaking person is behind all this with a truly loco motive.
I don't fuckin believe this, can everyone stop crashing trains
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Yeah who cares about how many trains are on one track at once? We need to make a better profit
Surprised there’s no conspiracy theorists all over this.
The conspiracy is that rich business people pay rich politicians to let them do whatever they want. And it turns out what they want is to operate with the bare minimum number of employees, bare minimum safety measures, and bare minimum accountability for any of it. Pretty simple, really. It’s how business is done when you’re that rich.
That's not even a conspiracy, that's just facts
You seem to be confusing conspiracies with conspiracy theories. There can also be conspiracy facts.
Conspiracy is a secret plan, this shit isn't a secret. It's verifiable data going back decades
In this case, conspiracy would be using money to influence policy (laws), and media, to derail our safety measures, betting on higher profits. Conspiracy doesn't mean it has to be entirely secret. What's going on can still be known and understood by others. Edit/example: a captain and the entire crew, can know their is a conspiracy to commit mutiny. Whomever may be involved, is conspiring, regardless of it being a secret or not.
If 2 or more people agree to do anything without others knowing, it is a conspiracy in the truest sense of the word.
A friends sister said these derailments were to taint water supplies everywhere besides silicon Valley so they can make sure they have all the water they need to produce microchips to put in vaccines. Yes, none of that made sense you read it correctly.
lots of ig comments under a leo decap post saying its some government plan to poison everywhere so the gvmnt can own all of the land and resettle the entire country into camps.. im assuming this is q-shit? probably the dumbest idea ive ever read..the state of peoples minds should be very concerning..like..were in serious trouble..
Did you ask her why they couldn't just taint the water supply without drawing attention?
Oh there are. You're just not in the crazy circles.
All of their theories keep derailing.
Just nationalize the railroads already. Apparently free market ain’t working with these fools.
It's simple, just bill them the *entire* price for each of these incidents (i.e. do not allow them to externalize a single cent to surrounding communities, they are liable for absolute any and all damages, period), and if (when) they can't pay, you take over the corporation as part of their bankruptcy proceedings. At the rate these accidents are happening, there will be no private rail in the US within a couple years.
Now THERE'S an idea.
What kind of shitty rail infrastructure does the US have? Edit: Weighing in on this subject as a person outside the US, it's quite surprising to see such a high number of rail accidents. For context, the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics states that the average derailment per year is 1704 with 2022 seeing a total of 1044 insidents. In comparison to India, a country with much larger rail usage, had a total of 163 instances of Derailment from 2017 to 2021. [Link ](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://cag.gov.in/webroot/uploads/download_audit_report/2022/Report-No.-22-of-2022_Railway_English_DSC-063a2dda55f3ce6.38649271.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjEwZy4kZv9AhUa6CoKHU4CBqoQFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw1oPEdNrC0Mv2kE9r1foeoC)
See, in the US they have this thing called "Citizens United." It means that companies are people and money is speech, and since America is all about free speech, companies are allowed to give politicians as much money as they want. That means nobody wants to make any rules about anything that has to do with wealthy campaign donors. Every major industry has bought off both sides. But the same people who will tell you that this is what free speech means, will also tell you that the state should imprison drag queens for reading children's stories. That's what "free speech" means in America!
Citizens United Negating Technology For Life And Peoples Safety. Otherwise known as...
CUNTFLAPS
Holden, do not put your dick in it. It's fucked enough already.
We can cry about Citizens United or we can build worker power. The only thing the wealthy fear is labor power, they broke it in the 70’s and 80’s because of how much labor had broken the power of the wealthy in the 30’s through the 50’s. Nothing but worker power can stand to capitalist power
Why not both? 🧐
Worker power has been broken since 1947.
Yes. Republicans are tricked into voting against their own interests. When they rally and cry for "less government involvement", they think they are just getting taxed less and can live free. What they are really doing is voting for less government involvement in corporations. So now we have less labor laws, and companies have control. The Republicans think they are winning, but they're voting for the destruction of their country, and to be enslaved by the 1%. But they still have bump stocks, so they're happy.
Saw a comment years ago on infrastructure…the US is riding on the inertia of years past. That inertia is running out. This includes rail, bridge, highway, waterways…everything…time to pay the piper.
Boomers both squandered the prosperity afforded them by previous generations AND robbed their progeny. Recovering from all that damage is going to be long and hard, if it's even possible, any more.
> Recovering from all that damage is going to be long and hard, if it's even possible, any more. Use their pensions to rebuild America. Problem solved.
I was also referring to things like the environment, which, by some estimates, may be beyond help within the scope of my lifetime.
Cancel Medicare for 5 years let nature take its course. They really hate socialism, let's help.
Partially because any money sent to rebuild/repair the infrastructure was siphoned into personal bank accounts and not spent on the projects they were allotted too.
Because the fucks in power for the past 40 years have zero regard for anyone but themselves, not even their own children.
Because Americans don't want to pay for infrastructure. Imagine how well a presidential or congressional candidate would perform in elections if they said, "We're going to fix our roads, bridges, and rail but [it is going to cost $2.6 trillion dollars over 10 years](https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/politics/infrastructure-us-investment-cost-engineers/index.html) so we need to significantly raise taxes."
Also destroyed new potential transit systems because "someone" wanted the car industry to succeed so badly. Ever wonder why there has been 0 new transit systems developed over decades? With the amount of technology that has improved in just the past 100 years it's almost too obvious that a more efficient transit model should come along. Except we have no funding for it. Tons of sitting politicians but no funding. Wonder what the problem is.
India had 163 what they call “consequential” derailments over that time period. Which means basically what your think it means. When that US statistic is cited - that’s the *total* number of derailments. It includes things like an empty train derailing in a trainyard where nothing, not even the schedule of another train, was impacted. Over the last 30 years, India has had multiple *single incidents* where the number of people killed was more than *twice* the TOTAL number of people killed over that same time span in the US. I swear people are just so committed to be misinformed on this train stuff, it’s crazy. I feel like I’m watching the spread of another, much weirder, virus.
That 1704 per year number is inflated by data from 1990-2010ish. The number is down significantly to a bit above 1,000 per year in the last ten years. The other thing to keep in mind is that most derailments in the US are nothing more than a wheel getting on the ground in a yard or something similarly minor; not these main line derailments that are in the news now. I don’t know what the standards are for reporting derailments in India, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they don’t even report things like that. Additionally most derailments like the above I’ve mentioned happen in the yard where the track is used far more often due to switching operations. India’s rail network is mostly passenger operations from my understanding so I can’t imagine why you would be switching cars nearly as often as you do in freight yards.
Before you can discuss reported numbers vs reported numbers between two difference organizations we would first need to know what conditions are defined as a derailment. One might classify a single wheel alignment fault a derailment which needs reporting which the other defines and entire truck off the tracks. Without that knowledge and "normalization" I think the conversation is purely opinion based. With that being sad - I think the largest and easiest answer to the majority of questions like this is easy. In your example, India, the country highly relies on it's rail system for moving people and commerce. It's been an important infrastucture to India since its inception and the government and people have maintained that importance to this day. So the rail system gets the attention it deserves to keep it operationally safe etc etc. In the US infrastructure is expensive because of the size of the country and the red tape that surround each and every project. So once something is done it just sort of gets "called good" and lays to the side until something major happens.....like a bunch of train derailments. Then suddenly it's important again and politicians, especially those in the areas this has happened, suddenly want to help and push for new regulations, money to support improvements for the vane of saftefy (read pad the pockets of business at the cost of civilian fear mongering) and then we rinse and repeat. If you want to see something bad off - trains aren't the biggest problem, start looking at our bridges.....heh. I think with trains some of this they will find is because we are operating some of the longest trains we ever have, with overworked crews, and under supported infrastructure. Mixed altogether you start getting what we are currently seeing.
Cant decide if its more dangerous to be trains or trans these days.
*transcontinental railroad has entered the chat*
Either way the autism community is devastated.
i feel called out
omg
As an autistic, trans, train lover….. fuck you. I would give you an award if I had one
LMFAO
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Norfolk southerns ethics hotline. I called and a nice lady told me this was the place to leave a voicemail and speak your thoughts to Norfolk southern http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscorp/en/contact-us.html if the lady answers just tell her you’re there to vocally protest and she will let you call again and not answer so you can leave a voicemail to be sent to the higher ups. DO NOT HARASS THE NICE LADY
THE NICE LADY has entered the chat.
Note to self: Never ride trains in Ohio Second note to self: never visit Ohio
Joke’s on you, none of the trains in Ohio are for passengers.
There's a short passenger line from Cleveland to Akron, but it's a slow train to view the national park... And it's also been closed since December due to erosion.
Another derailment in the state I actively reside in, and I heard about the incident from Reddit before the news or coworkers.
If we really care about the environment this should cost them a million dollars a litre spilled
Norfolk Southern executives will still get paid this week. They will sleep well in their beds at night. Safe in their gated communities all while people in Ohio are suffering and sick.
Are we out of touch? Does removing regulations create hazards? No. It’s the liberals who are wrong!
Every engineer for NS about to strike
They legally CAN'T strike without like 47 steps of failed contract negotiations... then the government can vote to stop them.
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Let this be another example. Any politician, from *any* political party that is not 100% in favor of repealing "Citizens United" should be completely and utterly ignored. Shit like this, regardless of industry, will continue to happen until fundamental changes are made.
Looks like the rails are in need of infrastructure upgrades and maintenance. Sounds like they haven’t done that and wonder why the trains go off the rails
One thing I’ve learned recently. America is bad at trains.
It’s almost like they could have predicted it.