19 December 2017 — 1553 mdt

Will someone go to jail for the WA Amtrak crash?

Updated below. Probably not, if history is any guide. Whether someone should be imprisoned as punishment for causing the crash that killed at least three and injured dozens more is a question for which the answer must await the results of the investigation. But we know from the train’s data recorder that it was barreling along at 80 mph heading into a 30 mph curve when it jumped the tracks. That means it blew through two slow down signs.

Was there a mechanical failure? Was the engineer medically disabled? Or was he just asleep at the switch? And why wasn’t there a system that would have reduced speed automatically if the engineer, for whatever reason, failed to do his job?

Another question: would lives have been saved, and injuries prevented or rendered less severe, if the passengers had been wearing seat belts?

I do not travel by bus or train. They’re not equipped with seat belts. Buses tend to carry a lot of people just out of jail. And above all, I don’t trust the bus drivers or train engineers. When I think of Amtrak, I tend to think of it as Deathtrak.

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This is a comment I submitted to the New York Times

Eleven died in 1903 when the fast mail train, Old 97, roaring downhill at almost 90 miles an hour, failed to negotiate the curve before the Stillhouse Trestle. The wreck, which occurred in circumstances not dissimilar from the Washington Amtrak wreck, was the subject of a famous folksong:

“it’s a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville,
Downhill on a three mile grade,
It was on that grade that he lost his air brakes,
See what a jump he made.”

It was the Washington train’s inaugural run, a circumstance that reminds one of a famous first voyage in 1912 that ended in tragedy before reaching its destination: the Titanic, steaming far too fast for conditions, sank after hitting an iceberg at night.

The fates of Old 97 and the Titanic should have been object lessons in hubris for the leaders of Amtrak. But if Amtrak’s leaders studied those events, it’s clear they learned nothing because their trains keep on killing their passengers.

If I can’t travel by airplane, I’ll drive. If I can’t travel by automobile (with seat belts and air bags), I’ll make my way from Seattle to Portland along I-5 by shanks mare. But the sun never will rise on the day, nor the moon on the night, that I as much as set foot on Amtrak. I want to reach my destination alive and well.