A head on collision between two fast moving trains causes a lot of damages because of the kinetic energy involved. The recent story made me sad because we certainly cannot prevent human errors.

This is a thought I have.

If the front of a train is made pointed and a bit off center, then the two colliding trains would slide pass each other and both flip onto the ground but continue sliding until the energy are dissipated in the form of friction.

It is certainly not good but could be better than crumbling up due to compression on force of impact.

 

That is an interesting suggestion, but it relies on the assumption that most injuries are due to the collision. One also needs to consider a common collision type where one train is stationary and the other collides into its rear.

In any event, I couldn't find data showing that most injuries were due to the direct impact. In fact, it appears being knocked off the track or fire are more likely to cause injury.

This first quote was from an investigation of a recent accident in the US:

Eight of the 11 people killed Friday in the crash of a Maryland commuter train and an Amtrak train in Silver Spring died in the resulting fire, not from the impact, raising the possibility that more could have survived if they had been able to flee the mangled commuter train, state and federal investigators said Monday.

This quote was from the report on the Purley crash in England:

The investigation report can be found here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1285848/?page=1

Therefore, I think designs that would keep the trains on the track would improve survivability. Perhaps adding crushable sections front and rear would help. Most important, operator error seems to be the most important contributor to cause, and it would be best to prevent the accident, rather than hope for survival afterwards.

John

 

The cause of most (read all) train wrecks is human error. Even in developed countries (GB) with modern rail transportation, they still have guys running around with flags and signals that must be manually obeyed; operator error again. Add to this the distraction of texting or phone foollery, and you can bet the accident rate is going to go up. Its a safe bet too.

Regards, DPW [ Everything has limitations...and I hate limitations.]

 

Only issue I see with that is now when trains will crash the trains could be thrown off track into pedestrians, rivers, or off mountains. I would suggest a shock cart designed to suck up the impact. If each train had a 1 to 2 car's specifically for impact I think that would help.

 

Hello,

A train crach happened yesterday in belgium:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/15/world/main6209225.shtml

18 people where killed , they are still searching for bodies.

Greetings,
Bertus

 

Don't give up on invention,look at large ships.The bottle nose
like a dophin was a new invention for ships.Yours sound like
earth quake plates sliding by a lot force ,could help. Taking
the texting phones away would do even more,good idea.
Good Luck Loosewire