Comments:Los Angeles commuter train collides with freight train; over two dozen killed

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Are U.S. rail safety standards stringent enough?

In my opinion yes. The Federal Railroad Administration is known for their strict guidelines. An example is the Acela train, it is shaped like France's TGV trains but based off a different series entirely. However, the cars and the locomotives are built much heavier then what the TGV weighs because of the FRA's "different approach to crash standards" (to quote the Acela Wikipedia article).

On top of that, the Acela runs just slightly higher than ordinary commuter trains speed on some parts of its line, the Northeast Corridor, because the trains are designed to tilt but they were built too wide and can possibly clip the side of passing trains on parallel tracks.

So yes, I say our rail safety standards are some of the most stringent in the world. Trains are behemoth vehicles, they are powerful and generally can more or less demolish a road vehicle and as we can see also, greatly damage other locomotives. For the most part in general, the majority of rail accidents occur because of human error on behalf of an engineer or if it was the track, it was most likely bad maintenance work or neglect on the behalf of the railroad's maintenance department. --TUFKAAP (talk) 04:20, 14 September 2008 (UTC)