Railroad tragedies are the exception not the rule

On a typical morning in America, newspapers arrive on porches, parents prepare their kids for school, and commuters sit in traffic. Behind the scenes, multi-ton freight trains chug along a vast network of tracks spanning the country to deliver the raw materials and commercial goods that make it all possible. On a typical morning, rail never comes to mind for most people. This is not because rail is unimportant, but because it is so fundamental, it is taken for granted. That is, until something goes wrong.

In recent years, railroads have been flung into the headlines over disastrous incidents and been scrutinized in state capitols across the nation over operational details. Yet the bitter taste that serious incidents leave lingering for weeks and months is — perhaps counterintuitively — an example of why rail is historically safe and improving every day.

Tragic incidents are memorable precisely because they are rare. While the impacts cannot be glossed over or ignored, the right reaction is relief for the specific incident, reform for what caused the incident, and continued support and compassion with the communities impacted. With President Biden’s visit to East Palestine last week, one year after the major incident there, these priorities should be kept in mind.

Furthermore, the public need not fear that innumerable train tragedies are just around the corner. And policymakers rushing to change laws based on rare events must ensure their reforms are data-based and targeted to the issues at hand, rather than wider preconceived industry reforms.

Just since the disaster in East Palestine one year ago, trains have moved over 500 million train miles across the country. In fact, in 2023 two million carloads of hazardous material were transported without accident, and the industry’s incident rate was only 3.265 train accidents per million train miles. Trains regularly move across hundreds of thousands of miles of track before having an incident — and for the subset of accident like derailments and collisions, the rate is far lower.

Derailments or collisions that are caused by human error is even more vanishingly small. A freight train will typically travel over 1.43 million train miles before a derailment caused by human error and over 7.35 million train miles before a human error-caused collision. It is curious that officials are pushing through a plan to mandate a minimum crew size. Such a policy, which will be a final rule on the books within a matter of weeks, would not have prevented the incident in Ohio, where the crew exceeded the proposed minimum. Data simply does not support that this rule is currently needed or effective.

Likewise, policymakers across the country are working on laws that would cap train length. The rationales range from safety concerns to blocking crossings. Data suggests otherwise, with train length increasing over the same two-decade period as total accident numbers have steadily fallen. Regarding safety, policymakers seem not to realize that the cargo has to move, so restricting train length either means running more trains through highway-rail crossings or more freight moved by truck, adding wear and tear to the roads and ironically increasing the risk of truck-train collisions.

It can often be shortsighted to make reactionary changes to policy after a tragedy, no matter how real the harm, if the proposed changes are not calibrated to the nature of the incident. In fact, such policies can inadvertently create new harms.

Harms include inefficiencies and increased risk across the entire transportation system. Crew size rules disrupt labor-capital allocations, undermining investment in the very technology driving down accidents and promoting safety. Limiting train length diverts freight onto trucks, which have higher casualty rates on public roadways than trains do on private tracks. Diversions add pressure to road maintenance backlogs, which increase potholes and congestion — both of which primarily harm families and commuters on the roads.

The reality is that trains are historically safe despite the genuine concerns and legitimate emotion tied to a severe incident. Even shocking statistics like “1,000 derailments a year” fade away in their proper context. That is the lowest number of derailments in decades, and most of those fail to make headlines because they involve no hazardous materials, fatalities, or meaningful economic impact. The safety achievements would not be possible without significant private investment in innovative technology, some of which has been in specific response to high-profile incidents, while some is even held back by rail regulators.

While it does not comfort those already impacted, railroad safety data indicates that most American communities are safe and have nothing to fear. Train accidents are becoming increasingly rare, which makes those that do occur more notable. Rewriting our laws to address a decreasing problem only handcuffs innovation, creates inefficiencies, and at the end of the day, harms families, communities, businesses, consumers, and commuters.

Benjamin Dierker is the executive director of the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure; the nation’s only public policy think tank dedicated to infrastructure.