Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1883 — The Safety of Railroads. [ARTICLE]

The Safety of Railroads.

To see how immeasurably superior the railroad is in point of safety to all other modes of transportation, we have only to compare the number of casualties with the number of persons transported. It will, of course, be understood that all such comparisons -are of the roughest kind, especially in this country, where no system exists for collecting oii preserving any uniform data in regard to railroad operation. Of the 375,000,000 persons annually carried over the railroads of the United States, about 1,800 meet with injuries more or less severe, while 460 are killed. Of the above numbers, 800 of those injured and 200 of the killed may be charged to causes for which the railroad companies are to a greater or less degree responsible, while the rest of the casualties are due to the carelessness of the passengers themselves. For every railroad passenger, therefore, who is killed in the United States, over 800,000 are carried safely; while for every passenger for whose death the railroad companies are accountable, nearly 2,000,000 are safely transported. For every railroad passenger who is in any way injured, 200,000 are safely carried; while for every passenger injured by causes for which the companies are responsible, nearly 500,000 are transported without accident. In Massachusetts—where the records have been more carefully and more systematically kept for the past ten years than in any other part of the country—the number of passengers carried in that time was, in round numbers, 400,000,000; of which number 581 were injured, 132 of them fatally. Of the whole number 250 were injured from causes beyond their own control, the remainder suffering from their own lack of care. Thus, for any passenger in any way injured, 688,000 were safely carried, while for every passenger killed 3,000,000 in round numbers were transported without injury. If we consider only those who were killed or injured from causes over which they themselves had no control, the results are somewhat different. Thus, in Massachusetts, during the nine years from 1871 to-1879, the number of passengers carried yfere 303,000,000, of which number fifty-one were killed by causes beyond their own control. For every person killed, therefore, 6,000.000 were safely carried. As the average distance traveled bv each person was about fifteen miICT, the total distance traveled by all before death happened to any one was 90,000,000 miles. In other words, a passenger with average good luck would travel at the rate of sixty miles ,aln hour for ten hours a day, for 300 days in a year, for 500 years, or he would get 3,600 times around the earth before getting killed.

It has b'feen stated on good authority that there were actually more persons killed and injured each year in Massachusetts fifty years ago, through accidents to stage-coaches, than there are now through accidents to railroad trains, notwithstanding the enormous increase id the number of persons transported. From the statistics of over forty years in France it appears that, in proportion to the whole number carried, the accidents to passengers by stage-coaches in old times were, as compared to those by railroads, as about sixty to one. The official returns in France actually show that a man is safer in a railroad train than he is in his own house; while in England the figures show that hanging is thirty times more likely to happen to a man than death by railroad. It is stated by Mr. Adams, in his “Notes on Railroad Accidents,” that the annual average of deaths by accident in the city of Boston alone exceeds that consequent on running all the railroads of the state of Massachusetts by Eighty ■ per cent., and that, in the five years from 1874 to 1878, more persons were murdered in Boston than lost their lives on all the railroads of the state for the nine years from 1871 to 1878, though those ' years included both the Revere and the Wallaston disasters, or fifty deaths. Such facts go far to prove the statement made thirty years ago by Dr. Lardner, that “of all means of locomotion which human invention has yet devised, railway travelling is the .safest in an almost infinite degree;” and the equally forcible statement of Mr. Adams, that “ it is not the danger, but the safety of the modern railroad which should excite our special, wonder. "—Prof. Geo • L. yose, in North American Review A German Emperor made a visit to one of his towns, and was received at the gate by a long row of deputies. Just as they were about to address him a neighbonng donkey set np a terrible bray. “Gentlemen," said the Emperor, “if you wish me to understand you, you must sveak one at a time.”