The Spanish Train Derailment

The world news recently has been full of reports on the horrendous train wreck in Spain that, at latest count, killed 80 people. Preliminary information suggests that the cause was that the train driver was going too fast, entering a curve on the line at more than twice the speed limit for that stretch.

It has made me remember the accident with the ocean liner the Costa Concordia, about a year ago where again human error was at fault: the ship was deliberately sailing too close to an island and struck submerged rocks, causing a very long gash in the ship's hull—a bit like the famous 1912 incident in which the Titanic hit an iceberg.

Every day we put ourselves at the mercy of train drivers, ship's captains, airline pilots. Subway drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers. And we trust these people to have proper care for our lives and to perform their jobs safely and responsibly.

I do not ride in a taxi for years at a time but the last time I did, I upbraided the driver for using his cell phone while he was driving. But unfortunately, in many cases—the train, the plane, even the bus—we probably are not aware of the conduct of the person who is at the controls. We routinely ride these conveyances without giving any thought to whether the person who is in charge is mindful of the lives in his or her hands.

If we stop to think about it, we'd like to believe that the person at the helm is sober, reasonable, sensible, responsible. And they are, in the majority of cases. But clearly, once in a while, they are not as we might wish. It's difficult to understand why the Spanish train driver or the captain of the Costa Concordia would improperly operate the machine he was controlling.

So we are left, as in so many cases, with a mystery of human behavior. Of course the person who begins to dwell on all the perils of life will lock himself in his house and never venture out. We would not consider that normal behavior. So 99.99 percent of us must go through life with trust and optimism, or in blissful ignorance, however you want to view it.

And life requires that. I had a conversation with my sister recently. She is 78 years old, and I was talking about our respective "conditions." I mentioned that I perhaps have been fortunate, not having had any of the "big" illnesses or conditions such as cancer, heart attack, or stroke. So, I concluded, I expect to live to a pretty old age. But then we got into how you never know what peril might strike. I adduced the case, a few years ago, where a person was walking down the street in Chicago, as ignorant and oblivious as can be, when a giant icicle happened to fall from the top of a tall building—and the poor and innocent pedestrian was killed by it.

So what is the moral? We are daily at the mercy of perils that are often unseen. Maybe we are daily shielded by our guardian angel, if you want to believe that. But we go sailing forth more blindly than the captain of any ship.

Copyright © 2013

What's Changed in the World. Part 1 - Transportation

This is the first of a series of blog postings on how the world has changed, mainly within my lifetime (sixty-some years), or over a somewhat longer period, since the 1930s. I was made to think about how things are changed or are different by watching, on DVD, an operetta by Kurt Weill called "Street Scene" and set in 1930s New York.

1. Transportation

In transportation, while some things have changed, some things really have not changed a lot. We still have cars, and they run on gas, a few hybrid cars notwithstanding and the imminent coming of plug-in electric cars notwithstanding. Nor would I radically qualify what I say for the existence of a few vehicles that run on propane, biodiesel, or whatever.

And we still have buses, trucks, and subways that are not basically changed (although the city of Chicago boasts of running several hundred hybrid buses). No, I won't say transportation has changed radically until we see vehicles powered by radical new fuels, or lots of high-speed or maglev trains in the U.S.

True, cars have changed in that they've gotten much more sophisticated, with more systems onboard for convenience and safety; and they are more powerful and thus faster. (A big 1930s Buick might have had only 80 horsepower or so, whereas now auto makers are bringing out models with 500 and 600 horsepower. I'm not sure I understand why.)

At one point—from the 1920s through, say, the '50s--long car trips were fostered by famous long highways like Route 66, which ran from Chicago to Los Angeles. A whole new car-centered culture sprang up, with the innovation of "motor hotels" (later to be called motels) and other roadside businesses that sprang up along the great road to serve the masses of travelers. Route 66 and its ilk were made obsolete by the Interstate Highway system, preached, if you will, by President Eisenhower much as medieval popes preached the Crusades, but not completed for a couple decades. (The system as originally envisioned was completed in 1992 but Interstate highways continue to be built. Under another view, the final leg of the original system is being completed right now.*)

Planes, I must admit, made a qualitative leap when passenger aircraft started to be jet-powered. (Jets can fly faster, higher, and smoother.) But what has changed much more than the available modes of transportation is their utilization. Fifty, sixty, seventy years ago people commonly rode on trains (just look at old movies). Today many people have never ridden on a train. When Amtrak took over the operation of passenger rail service in America in 1971, it dropped half of the existing trains; many smaller towns, and the small cities where I spent my youth—Scranton, PA and Wilkes-Barre, PA—no longer had any train service.

The flip side of people not relying on trains for their travel was of course the increase in air travel. And not only did planes replace trains for overland travel, planes replaced ships even more completely for trans-oceanic travel. It's still possible to cross the Atlantic on a ship, but our everyday travel—for business and almost as completely for pleasure—now is done on planes. If speed is your criterion, it's no contest: you'll take the plane rather than a ship. And with trains as compared with planes, it's understandable that not many people care to spend two or three days on a train for those longer trips.

Another thing once associated with trains but now long gone is Railway Express. Individuals and businesses could use it to send parcels. Think of it as the predecessor of UPS. I sent a big steamer trunk with my clothes to my new address when I was starting grad school.
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*Wikipedia, s.v. Amtrak.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein