On the not so bright side [notice the pun only afterwards...] they have a very high death rate.
American pedestrians and drivers obviously have not learned yet that trains can be fast.
Source: https://spiegel.de a couple of days ago
American pedestrians and drivers obviously have not learned yet that trains can be fast.
Source: https://spiegel.de a couple of days ago
Nearly 100 people have been killed by this train since 2019. This is an incredibly dangerous transportation mode for the number of passengers it handles.
The article says all grade crossings have barriers, so the video showing a collision shows the car driving around the lowered barriers.
However, with the size and weight of American vehicles, I'm surprised they didn't use full-barrier crossings — there's the potential to derail a train.
I'd say most European high speed lines are completely free of level crossings. (Europe has a lot of variation, so I might miss some exception.) Which is even more expensive.
There are lines at roughly this speed in Europe with level crossings, e.g. the UK (125mph), Finland (85mph), Norway (100mph), Sweden (125mph), but there's not much detail on the speeds allowed for various types of crossing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_crossings_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_crossings_in_the_United_...