CHINA'S RAILWAY "DISASTER"

World's Safest?

How Safe are China's Railways...Really?

1. Railways are the safest means of transportation among all methods in this study.
2. Railway safety-wise, China and France are about twice as safe as Japan and Germany.
3. You are about 2.2 times likely to die in an American airplane as in a Chinese rail car.
4. You are about 200 times likely to die in a vehicle on an American highway as in a Chinese rail car.

Want to know more about transportation safety world wide, and China's place in it?

By international rail safety measures--fatalities per trillion passenger miles--China's high speed rail system is neck and neck with the world's safety leader, Japan.

China's trains are far safer than those of Germany, for example, which has less track, fewer passengers, and longer operating experience.

The recent Wenzhou accident that killed 40 people was indeed a wake-up call to the government that it had given the Rail Ministry too much independence (though even American railways have their own police forces!).  But it was an accident, not a disaster.  And the CCP is committed to a thorough overhaul of both management and operations, as we would expect of a government run by 8 engineers.

Compared to this week's 800 US road deaths, attempts to portray the accident as anything worse are uninformed and even deliberate, since international statistics are readily available.  The kind of nonsense being spouted about the accident is not aimed not at Chinese readers, who presumably know better, but at Westerners who might be beginning to think that perhaps the Chinese have their act together.

Such reporting is an attempt to discredit China's government, the most popular in the world (Pew).  The reason for this antipathy is that in China the government tells corporations what to do whereas in the West, corporations control our governments.  We can see (or could see if the corporate media were more truthful) which approach is more successful.  Perhaps some day other countries will adopt aspects of China's approach.  We could start by allowing only engineers to stand for elected office and by eliminating "campaign contributions".  Now THAT would be fun!