Notes on Railroad Accidents

When we pass from Great Britain to the continental countries of Europe, the difficulties in the way of any fair comparison of results become greater and greater. The statistics do not enter sufficiently into detail, nor is the basis of computation apparent. It is generally conceded that, where a due degree of caution is exercised by the passenger, railroad traveling in continental countries is attended with a much less degree of danger than in England. When we come to the returns, they hardly bear out this conclusion; at least to the degree commonly supposed. Take France, for example. Nowhere is human life more carefully guarded than in that country; yet their returns show that of 866,000,000 passengers transported on the French railroads during the eleven years 1859-69, no less than 65 were killed and 1,285 injured from causes beyond their control; or one in each 13,000,000 killed as compared with one in 10,700,000 in Great Britain; and one in every 674,000 injured as compared with one in each 330,000 in the other country. During the single year 1859, about 111,000,000 passengers were carried on the French lines, at a general cost to the community of 2,416 casualties, of which 295 were fatal. In Massachusetts, during the four years 1871-74, about 95,000,000 passengers were carried, at a reported cost of 1,158 casualties. This showing might well be considered favorable to Massachusetts did not the single fact that her returns included more than twice as many deaths as the French, with only a quarter as many injuries, make it at once apparent that the statistics were at fault. Under these circumstances comparison could only be made between the numbers of deaths reported; which would indicate that, in proportion to the work done, the railroad operations of Massachusetts involved about twice and a half more cases of injury to life and limb than those of the French service. As respects Great Britain the comparison is much more favorable, the returns showing an almost exactly equal general death-rate in the two countries in proportion to their volumes of traffic; the volume of Great Britain being about four times that of France, while its death-rate by railroad accidents was as 1,100 to 295.

With the exception of Belgium, however, in which country the returns cover only the lines operated by the state, the basis hardly exists for a useful comparison between the dangers of injury from accident on the continental railroads and on those of Great Britain and America. The several systems are operated on wholly different principles, to meet the needs of communities between whose modes of life and thought little similarity exists. The continental trains are far less crowded than either the English or the American, and, when accidents occur, fewer persons are involved in them. The movement, also, goes on under much stricter regulation and at lower rates of speed, so that there is a grain of truth in the English sarcasm that on a German railway "it almost seems as if beer-drinking at the stations were the principal business, and traveling a mere accessory."

Limiting, therefore, the comparison to the railroads of Great Britain, it remains to be seen whether the evil reputation of the American roads as respects accidents is wholly deserved. Is it indeed true that the danger to a passenger's life and limbs is so much greater in this country than elsewhere?—Locally, and so far as Massachusetts at least is concerned, it certainly is not. How is it with the country taken as a whole?—The lack of all reliable statistics as respects this wide field of inquiry has already been referred to. We have no trustworthy data. We do not know with accuracy even the number of miles of road operated; much less the number of passengers annually carried. As respects accidents, and the deaths and injuries resulting therefrom, some information may be gathered from a careful and very valuable, because the only record which has been preserved during the last six years in the columns of the Railroad Gazette. It makes, of course, no pretence at either official accuracy or fullness, but it is as complete probably as circumstances will permit of its being made. During the five years 1874-8 there have been included in this record 4,846 accidents, resulting in 1,160 deaths and 4,650 cases of injury;—being an average of 969 accidents a year, resulting in 232 deaths and 930 cases of injury. These it will be remembered are casualties directly resulting either to passengers or employés from train accidents. No account is taken of injuries sustained by employés in the ordinary operation of the roads, or by members of the community not passengers. In Massachusetts the accidents to passengers and employés constitute one-half of the whole, but a very small portion of the injuries reported as sustained by either passengers or employés are the consequence of train accidents,—not one in three in the case of passengers or one in seven in that of employés. In fact, of the 2,350 accidents to persons reported in Massachusetts in the nine years 1870-8, but 271, or less than twelve per cent., belonged to the class alone included in the reports of the Railroad Gazette. In England during the four years 1874-7 the proportion was larger, being about twenty-five instead of twelve per cent. For America at large the Massachusetts proportion is undoubtedly the most nearly correct, and the probabilities would seem to be that the annual average of injuries to persons incident to operating the railroads of the United States is not less than 10,000, of which at least 1,200 are due to train accidents. Of these about two-thirds may be set down as sustained by passengers, or, approximately, 800 a year.

It remains to be ascertained what proportion this number bears to the whole number carried. There are no reliable statistics on this head any more than on the other. Nothing but an approximation of the most general character is possible. The number of passengers annually carried on the roads of a few of the states is reported with more or less accuracy, and averaging these the result would seem to indicate that there are certainly not more than 350,000,000 passengers annually carried on the roads of all the states. There is something barbarous about such an approximation, and it is disgraceful that at this late day we should in America be forced to estimate the passenger movement on our railroads in much the same way that we guess at the population of Africa. Such, however, is the case. We are in this respect far in the rear of civilized communities. Taking, however, 350,000,000 as a fair approximation to our present annual passenger movement, it will be observed that it is as nearly as may be half that of Great Britain. In Great Britain, in 1878, there were 1,200 injuries to passengers from accidents to trains, and 675 in 1877. The average of the last eight years has been 1,226. If, therefore, the approximation of 800 a year for America is at all near the truth, the percentage would seem to be considerably larger than that arrived at from the statistics of Great Britain. Meanwhile it is to be noted that while in Great Britain about 25 cases of injury are reported to each one of death, in America but four cases are reported to each death—a discrepancy which is extremely suggestive. Perhaps, however, the most valuable conclusion to be drawn from these figures is that in America we as yet are absolutely without any reliable railroad statistics on this subject at all.

Taken as a whole, however, and under the most favorable showing, it would seem to be a matter of fair inference that the dangers incident to railroad traveling are materially greater in the United States than in any country of Europe. How much greater is a question wholly impossible to answer. So that when a statistical writer undertakes to show, as one eminent European authority has done, that in a given year on the American roads one passenger in every 286,179 was killed, and one in every 90,737 was injured, it is charitable to suppose that in regard to America only is he indebted to his imagination for his figures.

Neither is it possible to analyze with any satisfactory degree of precision the nature of the accidents in the two countries, with a view to drawing inferences from them. Without attempting to do so it maybe said that the English Board of Trade reports for the last five years, 1874-8, include inquiries into 755 out of 11,585 accidents, the total number of every description reported as having taken place. Meanwhile the Railroad Gazette contains mention of 4,846 reported train accidents which occurred in America during the same five years. Of these accidents, 1,310 in America and 81 in Great Britain were due to causes which were either unexplained or of a miscellaneous character, or are not common to the systems of the two countries. In so far as the remainder admitted of classification, it was somewhat as follows:—

The above record, though almost valueless for any purpose of exact comparison, reveals, it will be noticed, one salient fact. Out of 755 English accidents, no less than 406 came under the head of collisions—whether head collisions, rear collisions, or collisions on sidings or at junctions. In other words, to collisions of some sort between trains were due considerably more than half (54 per cent.) of the accidents which took place in Great Britain, while only 88, or less than 13 per cent. of the whole, were due to derailments from all causes. In America on the other hand, while of the 3,763 accidents recorded, 1,324, or but one-third part (35 per cent.) were due to collisions, no less than 586, or 24 per cent., were classed under the head of derailments, due to defects in the permanent way. During the the six years 1873-8 there were in all 1698 cases of collision of every description between trains reported as occurring in America to 1495 in the United Kingdom; but while in America the derailments amounted to no less than 4016, or more than twice the collisions, in the United Kingdom they were but 817, or a little more than half their number. It has already been noticed that the most disastrous accidents in America are apt to occur on bridges, and Ashtabula and Tariffville at once suggest themselves. This is not the case in Great Britain. Under the heading of "Failures of Tunnels, Bridges, Viaducts or Culverts," there were returned in that country during the six years 1873-8 only 29 accidents in all; while during the same time in America, under the heads of broken bridges or tressels and open draws, the Gazette recorded no less than 165. These figures curiously illustrate the different manner in which the railroads of the two countries have been constructed, and the different circumstances under which they are operated. The English collisions are distinctly traceable to constant overcrowding; the American derailments and bridge accidents to inferior construction of our road-beds.

Finally, what of late years has been done to diminish the dangers of the rail?—What more can be done?—Few persons realize what a tremendous pressure in this respect is constantly bearing down upon those whose business it is to operate railroads. A great accident is not only a terrible blow to the pride and prestige of a corporation, not only does it practically ruin the unfortunate officials involved in it, but it entails also portentous financial consequences. Juries proverbially have little mercy for railroad corporations, and, when a disaster comes, these have practically no choice but to follow the scriptural injunction to settle with their adversaries quickly. The Revere catastrophe, for instance, cost the railroad company liable on account of it over half a million of dollars; the Ashtabula accident over $600,000; the Wollaston over $300,000. A few years ago in England a jury awarded a sum of $65,000 for damages sustained through the death of a single individual. During the five years, 1867-71, the railroad corporations of Great Britain paid out over $11,000,000 in compensation for damages occasioned by accidents. In view, merely, of such money consequences of disaster, it would be most unnatural did not each new accident lead to the adoption of better appliances to prevent its recurrence.[30]

To return, however, to the subject of railroad accidents, and the final conclusion to be drawn from the statistics which have been presented. That conclusion briefly stated is that the charges of recklessness and indifference so generally and so widely advanced against those managing the railroads cannot for an instant be sustained. After all, as was said in the beginning of the present volume, it is not the danger but the safety of the railroad which should excite our special wonder. If any one doubts this, it is very easy to satisfy himself of the fact,—that is, if by nature he is gifted with the slightest spark of imagination. It is but necessary to stand once on the platform of a way-station and to look at an express train dashing by. There are few sights finer; few better calculated to quicken the pulse. It is most striking at night. The glare of the head-light, the rush and throb of the locomotive,—the connecting rod and driving-wheels of which seem instinct with nervous life,—the flashing lamps in the cars, and the final whirl of dust in which the red tail-lights vanish almost as soon as they are seen,—all this is well calculated to excite our admiration; but the special and unending cause for wonder is how, in case of accident, anything whatever is left of the train. As it plunges into the darkness it would seem to be inevitable that something must happen, and that, whatever happens, it must necessarily involve both the train and every one in it in utter and irremediable destruction. Here is a body weighing in the neighborhood of two hundred tons, moving over the face of the earth at a speed of sixty feet a second and held to its course only by two slender lines of iron rails;—and yet it is safe!—We have seen how when, half a century ago, the possibility of something remotely like this was first discussed, a writer in the British Quarterly earned for himself a lasting fame by using the expression that "We should as soon expect people to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as to trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate;"—while Lord Brougham exclaimed that "the folly of seven hundred people going fifteen miles an hour, in six trains, exceeds belief." At the time they wrote, the chances were ninety-nine in a hundred that both reviewer and correspondent were right; and yet, because reality, not for the first nor the last time, saw fit to outstrip the wildest flights of imagination, the former at least blundered, by being prudent, into an immortality of ridicule. The thing, however, is still none the less a miracle because it is with us matter of daily observation. That, indeed, is the most miraculous part of it. At all hours of the day and of the night, during every season of the year, this movement is going on. It never wholly stops. It depends for its even action on every conceivable contingency, from the disciplined vigilance of thousands of employés to the condition of the atmosphere, the heat of an axle, or the strength of a nail. The vast machine is in constant motion, and the derangement of a single one of a myriad of conditions may at any moment occasion one of those inequalities of movement which are known as accidents. Yet at the end of the year, of the hundreds of millions of passengers fewer have lost their lives through these accidents than have been murdered in cold blood. Not without reason, therefore, has it been asserted that, viewing at once the speed, the certainty, and the safety with which the intricate movement of modern life is carried on, there is no more creditable monument to human care, human skill, and human foresight than the statistics of railroad accidents.

INDEX.