Recent comments in /f/dataisbeautiful

1776johnross t1_jbcl63b wrote

Reply to Sentiment Analysis of some famous Twitter Acounts [OC] by briansteel420

Interesting! Horizontal grid lines (from the left y axis ticks) would be helpful for me, or at least one at 0 on the left y axis. Red/Green imply bad/good and some people can't tell the difference (colorblind). I might try showing sentiment with a black line and showing the count with a gray line or even gray area.

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Ksumatt t1_jbcisk7 wrote

Reply to comment by nac_nabuc in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

One major difference between European countries and the US when it comes to derailments is that most of our derailments are going to come from minor derailments from yard switching operations. When these happen, it’s generally something as small as a couple of wheels of one car getting on the ground. Since we primarily move freight (which requires a lot of switching) and Europe primarily moves people (which should require far less switching), you’re going to see a much larger number of derailments based on the type of operation.

I’d imagine most of those derailments in Spain and across the EU are main line derailments which are the types of derailments you generally think of. To get a good comparison we’d need to see how the US compares to the EU on main line derailments as they’re generally the ones that really matter.

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AverageAustralian111 t1_jbce9m5 wrote

Reply to comment by nac_nabuc in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

>Yeah, it's not the most relevant comparison but Reddit loves US Vs EU comparisons.

This is so frustrating to me. As someone who works in a field that overlaps all of the favourite comparisons (economics, crime, transport etc.) I find myself screaming internally about how much of an oversimplification pretty much every comparison of two countries is.

When the Americans pull out their economic statistics (usually GDP/c) and Europeans pull out their crime statistics, I have to stop myself from commenting and pointing out how little value any of these metrics really provide for anything.

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AverageAustralian111 t1_jbcd47h wrote

Reply to comment by nac_nabuc in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

Damn, respect for finding that.

The big problem with comparing the US and EU countries is just how different they are. US passenger transport is totally backward compared to its EU counterpart, the almost the exact reverse is true with freight rail.

Freight rail is far more prone to accidents because A) the trains are far longer and the carriages are far heavier, and B) accidents are far less of a problem because the consequences of freight derailments are usually minimal (with non-hazardous freight at least, which is the majority of freight)

The second huge difference is population density. There are vast tracts of rail in the US that are far far away from any major population centers, which naturally makes maintenance far more difficult.

The flip side of this, of course, is the average derailment in Europe will cause more injuries and fatalities, so using fatalities as a proxy for derailments (as I accidentally did above) is unfair toward the EU.

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nac_nabuc t1_jbccv85 wrote

Reply to comment by AverageAustralian111 in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

If the derailments are due to infrastructure problems like signaling and track maintenance it probably doesn't make sense to try and achieve higher standards of safety for the US since their infrastructure costs are so ridiculously high. Wouldn't be surprised if you'd see budgets that are closer to Spanish HIGh speed construction costs for just some signaling and small track upgrades.

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AverageAustralian111 t1_jbcbe71 wrote

Reply to comment by nac_nabuc in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

Yes, you are absolutely correct. I'm not sure how I missed that.

My point was that, once preventative measures are at some level, as preventative measures reach diminishing returns, it is more efficient to deal with the very small number of accidents than it is to invest in trying to prevent them.

These recent Ohio and Greece accidents are the only ones I can recall that were bad enough to make the news. So at a rate of roughly 1 major accident in both the EU and US over...I would say around 5 years (although I might just not have heard about or not remember previous ones,) I would say the safety over this time has been pretty good. Definitely overwhelmingly better than road transport, which is its main competitor.

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nac_nabuc t1_jbcb288 wrote

Reply to comment by Urmambulant in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

Just to give you a scale of how wrong your probably scale was: Spain had 8 derailments in 2021. Assuming every EU country has twice as many, including countries with people, Europe would have only a bit more than 400 per year while having 1/3 more population (22 of those countries have less population than Spain).

https://www.seguridadferroviaria.es/recursos_aesf/ias_nsa_espana_2022.pdf (p. 28, Spanish PDF)

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nac_nabuc t1_jbcasiu wrote

Reply to comment by Urmambulant in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

Just to give you a scale of how wrong your probably scale was: Spain had 8 derailments in 2021. Assuming every EU country has twice as many, including countries with people, Europe would have only a bit more than 400 per year while having 1/3 more population (22 of those countries have less population than Spain).

https://t.co/UN8avHovQz (pdf in Spanish sadly, p.28).

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nac_nabuc t1_jbc0miy wrote

Reply to comment by AverageAustralian111 in [OC] Let’s look at some train data 🚂, data from US Federal Railroad Administration by nymaps

Are you sure you are comparing the same thing?

>Significant accident Any accident involving at least one rail vehicle in motion, resulting in at least one killed or seriously injured person, or in significant damage to stock, track, other installations or environment, or extensive disruptions to traffic. Accidents in workshops, warehouses and depots are excluded.

Says nothing about derailment. It's older data, but 2015 Europe has 0 deaths and 0 serious injuries from derailments and since your graph shows fatalities, my conclusion is that significant accident isnt limited to derailments.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=326173

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