Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi
To be fair the major rail companies tend to be more reactionary than proactive when it comes to safety issues. Remember that train near golden a few years ago that was parked on an incline in extreme cold and the break lines gave out causing the train to roll backwards down the tracks and eventually derail? The policies were changed after the incident, but it could have been prevented had there been better safety standards in place to begin with.
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I knew the locomotive engineer who was killed in that wreck. The Transport Canada report on the accident has not been released yet, but a lot of things had to (and unfortunately did) go wrong in order for that to happen. Obviously when people lose their lives things get emotional and everyone wants someone to blame, but I would argue that railway companies in Canada are actually extremely safety-focused and that incidents like the Field Hill runaway are very much the exception to the rule. Mile for mile, rail transport is at least ten times safer than driving or flying.