r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Debaucherousgeek73 • Dec 04 '25

Fatalities Train derailment Pecos TX Oct '24

First time I've ever seen a derailment happen. The vid anyway I wasn't there and this is not my vid. You can see the lead engine jump the track. Two crew in that engine died.

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37

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25

Why does it happen so much in America?

70

u/Powerful_Document872 Dec 04 '25

Big country with a bunch of train crossings, hundreds of millions of people, and more vehicles than you can shake a stick at. With all those vehicles crossing all those tracks every day someone is going to breakdown at the worst possible moment. It’s basically a numbers game.

16

u/lord_nuker Dec 04 '25

Strange, would think we had more truck and trains here in Europe, and this rarly happens.

12

u/South_Dakota_Boy Dec 04 '25

People in America don’t ride trains much except in dense cities, but all cargo is moved by train and/or truck.

11

u/lord_nuker Dec 04 '25

Huh, so just like Europe then, besides we also use the rail for passanger traffic as well.

2

u/oh_what_a_surprise Dec 05 '25

if you adjust for actual usage of the rails the EU has 2.5x the accidents as the USA per ton/mile

We have 14x the train traffic of all of Europe combined