Always try to sit in seats where your back is toward the direction of motion.
I don't have data but I would imagine crashes on these high speed lines (which always seem to be run at a higher level of professionalism than the general networks) are rarest of all.
I don't think it's a good use of mental energy to plan for a crash like this. You're better off using your brain cycles on hygiene or not losing your luggage.
> I would imagine crashes on these high speed lines (which always seem to be run at a higher level of professionalism than the general networks) are rarest of all
If this crash is anything like the other ones, you might be surprised. Safety complacency tends to cause maintenance failures. Plus the low speed lines are less deadly since the total energy is proportional to velocity squared, and v is low.
In other words, it might be more helpful to look at it as "if they’re run at a higher level of standards, it’s because they have to be".
Statistically you’re probably right, but considering how many brain cycles we waste on non-essentials, it’s just as fun to waste them on this. That way you can start a nerdy conversation with your travel companions, and they can learn to travel without you next time.
Sure they are.
> Besides, you’ll get to feel a nice jolt of serotonin when you remember to sit backwards.
I can also get that by remembering that I'm conquering a superstition and fitting my behavior closer to real risks.
You're forgetting about the probability of a crash.
The vast majority of train crashes is due to an impact with a vehicle on a railway crossing.
However, high-speed rail is grade separated, so it doesn't have railway crossings, which means the main cause of crashes is fundamentally impossible.
In other words: Regular rail has a high rate of crashes (with a small number of fatalities each) due to car/truck drivers screwing up. High-speed rail has a low rate of crashes (with a large-ish number of fatalities each) due to catastrophic failure of track & train equipment.
In France and Japan, HSR has had zero fatalities in the entire period of operation.
In China, HSR had AFAIR one fatal crash, with 40 fatalities. Per passenger-mile, Chinese HSR is twice as safe as US air travel.
At first, when seeing it was in 2015 I was extremely surprised I didn't heard about it at the time. Then I saw the date: Nov 14th 2015, just the day after the ISIS terror attacks in Paris, France's 9/11. Of course we barely heard about a train crash at that time…
It did briefly made the news but not for long due to the terror attacks and also there wasn’t any passenger on this train, it was a train testing.
In fact the story is even more tragic when you know that the day before, they also were too fast in the same turn and in the records you hear something like « few, that was close, better take care next time ».
However, for sure this crash should have never happened but it only happened because they were testing the limits of both the train and the track.
It’s literally like a test pilot crashing an airplane while testing all the limits : it should never happen but they are still there for it not to happen in commercial flights.
No. It happened because they were under-prepared and disorganized, and thereby didn't respect the speed restrictions for the segment of track they were on.
They crashed entering a 175 km/h segment at 265 km/h, which is well above the 10% overspeed they were theoretically testing that day.
Most railway deaths in the EU are due to unauthorized people on the tracks or due to crossings. The actual number of passengers deaths has been really low in the past years.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
So yeah if you follow the rules you are REALLY safe with rail.
Not to mention the stats about HSR specifically that a few others brought up.
In the EU it's safer than flying, with 0.5 deaths per 100 billion km/ passenger vs 3 deaths per 100 billion kms/ passenger. However, since an airplane flies at, let's say, six times the average speed of a train, the actual probability of dying during a 1-hour trip is almost 40 times more on a plane than on a train.
However, there were a number of problems - people didn't like sitting in them, people didn't like hearing that their seat wasn't as safe as the others, you can't get as many rows in unless you turn them all backwards, and the structure needs to be designed differently so then you need more spares.
(edit: I guess it's more of no-brainer on a train/bus where you don't have a seat belt)
But it's really theoretical, and does not account for the passenger in front of you headed head-first into your throat.
PS: I laughed hard that xlbuttplug2 is answering to deadbabe. The internet lives!
Are you one of the safety engineers? Have you discovered anything which isn't included in normal safety tests which should be?
But sitting backwards is very very uncomfortable if there is any kind of uneven acceleration, bumps, swaying, rolling, curvy tracks or whatever. Humans need to look forward at the horizon to get their visual stimuli aligned with their motion/balance sense in the inner ear. If that alignment isn't there, you will get seasick. Backwards makes this even worse.
Babies don't suffer from this, because closing your eyes helps, and infants don't have as strong a reaction to motions anyways, due to them usually being carried by their parents until walking age. So reverse baby seats only work for babies.
You never know.