Railroad Crash Tests

Recently, government engineers set out to create an actual train wreck in the hopes that they can, in the future, create safer trains.

On April 4, 2000, government engineers equipped two standard passenger train cars, the weight of approximately 75 tons of steel, with crash test dummies and a multitude of sophisticated instruments. The cars were then propelled at exactly 26 mph directly into a wall. High-speed film cameras, capable of capturing minute details, recorded the entire process.

While it will be months before researchers have the results of these tests, safety experts are hoping that the results will provide the information that they need to keep passengers safer in the event a crash does occur. Until this point, researchers have depended on simulated train wrecks and sophisticated computer models to tell them exactly what happens to the human body upon impact in a train wreck. From this research, our current government safety standards have been established.

An average of 500 passengers are injured each year in train accidents, but deaths remain rare occurrences. Some experts say that seatbelts would help to lessen the amount of injuries that occur in crashes, others say that more research is needed. The government has relied upon the theory of compartments to prevent passengers from being thrown around the train in a severe accident. Recent tests conducted by the Federal Railroad Administration suggest differently. Those dummies not belted were "catapulted over the top of the seat in front of them, and what I should point out is in this particular case we stripped out all the things like luggage racks above the seats. So had those been there, at least one of the dummies would have struck the luggage rack over top. Seatbelts would save lives in this kind of severe impact," said Joe Coltman, a private contractor involved in the FRA's tests.

Look for more tests to be conducted in the coming months. Safety experts are planning a head-on collision with a locomotive in the fall months. Until then, the industry will be installing new seats and upgrading the old ones to match the newer, tougher government standards.