High Speed rail is way safer than driving in China

Tweet A commercial van slammed into a truck Monday in northwest China, killing nine people and bringing the overall death toll to 56 in three big accidents on the country's notoriously dangerous roads over the past two days. On Sunday, 36 people were burned to death when a double-decker bus rammed into a tanker loaded with high flammable methanol on another highway in Shaanxi, causing both vehicles to burst into flames. Road safety is a serious problem in China. According to Xinhua, poorly maintained roads and bad driving habits result in about 70,000 deaths and 300,000 injuries a year.

The United States has about 33,000 traffic deaths each year which is down from about 43,000 deaths per year before the recession.

There was an infamous high speed rail accident which killed 43 people in 2011 in China.

China rail safety: 876.22 billion passenger-km/year, 317 deaths over 20 years. This is one death per 55.3 billion passenger-km.

China's railway safety statistics appear to be under-reported. However, the roads in China seem far more dangerous than the rail.



Rail usage statistics by country in wikipedia

Here are european railway safety statistics.


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