Subways are Deathtraps, Everybody Panic!

June 24th, 2009

I have a love-hate relationship with the news media. They are, in my mind, a necessary evil. We are a need-to-know-now generation and the countless news outlets provide just that. But then, sometimes, they grab hold of something that is less important and don’t let go. This, too, can be good or bad. It’s like the time doctors said that too much cholesterol contributes to heart disease. The media got hold of it and told everyone that cholesterol is bad and should be avoided. So, new health problems arose and doctors had to say that ‘some’ cholesterol is necessary. There seems to be no balance sometimes in the media.

This article from a Baltimore TV Station, “Millions Ride Risky Subway Cars“, is a good example. The cars are actually only risky in a train-train crash, and that risk is very low in subway systems.

The DC Metro train crash is a tragedy that killed 9 people and injured scores more. The NTSB is trying to figure out what happened and the news media is focusing on the crash-worthiness of train cars. Both are important, but I think the news media is failing to focus on the more urgent matter, at least at first. Let’s try to figure out what went wrong first, fix that, then fix the train cars. The question of whether or not the train cars were designed to protect occupants in a crash is secondary to what caused the crash in the first place because if the crash had never happened, crash-worthiness would not have come up.

On the positive side, though, is now that this catastrophe has happened, transit systems across the US will begin evaluating their train cars just in case a crash happens, and this is a good thing.

In a recent trip to Washington, DC, my wife and I rode the DC Metro without any problems at all and I still believe it to be a very safe form of tranportation. I plan to use the Metro again when I return.