Japanese Crowd Trains Despite Deadly Crash

[dArKeR]

Throngs of Japanese packed railway stations and high-speed bullet trains Friday for the start of a "Golden Week" of national holidays just days after the country's worst train accident in four decades.

Bullet trains run by West Japan Railway Co. — which operated the commuter train that derailed Monday and killed 106 people — were standing-room-only.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=9&u=/ap/20050429/ap_on_re_as/japan_train_derailed_36

By KENJI HALL, Associated Press Writer

Kenji, incredible! Tell the readers that they really have no other choice.

[Fleshdancer]

1. what a ridiculous article

The entire country can't stop every time a tragedy occurs. It would be like assuming New Yorkers would all stop taking the subways after a rare accident happens. Nonsense.

[daleo]

2. Train wrecks are spectacular and rare

Car wrecks are unspectacular and commonplace. But cars kill far more people (per mile of per-person transport) than cars.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. True: train wrecks make the news precisely because they're rare

I've never heard of anyone giving up driving after hearing about a major car crash.

The train is by far the fastest and most reliable way to travel in Japan. There literally hasn't been a crash of this size for forty years, and the Shinkansen (bullet train) has never had a passenger fatality since the first line opened in 1964. (The train in the Amagasaki crash was an ordinary commuter train. These run electrically with an electricl motor in every other car and a driver in a tiny compartment in the front.)