Brightline has now killed 182 pedestrians and motorists along its Florida route. The rail line, which lost half a billion dollars in 2024, has failed to install better crossing gates and fencing that would have prevented most if not all of these deaths even though the first deaths happened when the train was in the test stages in 2017.
Photo by BBT609.
Brightline is the deadliest train in America, killing almost 25 people per million train-miles of travel. Second is San Diego’s Coaster commuter train, at 16.6 deaths per million train-miles; followed by the Altamont Commuter Express and CalTrain, both of which were between 10 and 11 deaths per million. All others were less than ten. However, the Los Angeles Metrolink, Florida TriRail, Orlando SunRail, Seattle Sounder, and Texas’ Trinity Railway Express shouldn’t be proud of their deadly records, as all of them killed more people per million train-miles than Amtrak, which itself kills almost 150 people per year.
Reporters for the Miami Herald and WLRN say that it took more than a year for them to determine that the Brightline death toll is up to 182 and to compare its numbers with other passenger rail lines. They provide a link to a Federal Railroad Administration database that gives the raw numbers, but they wanted to review each death to determine how it came about. It’s good to see that some reporters are still willing to ask (and find answers to) hard questions.
It’s notable that when I point out that most pedestrians who are killed in traffic accidents were crossing major arterials streets at night without the benefit of crosswalks, and many were inebriated, people say I am blaming the victims. But when I point out that Brightline could have prevented these deaths with common-sensical protections of its right of way, the same people say it was the victims’ own faults for not obeying crossing signals or trespassing on the rail right of way. I believe that assigning blame is less important than fixing the problems that allow accidents to happen, and Brightline isn’t doing that.
If your principle of “fault doesn’t matter” is to be applied consistently, then our attention on Brightline’s external fatalities, while tragic, is a significant misdirection compared to the silent, far deadlier crisis on our roads, particularly for pedestrians.
Annually, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of transportation-related deaths in the U.S. In 2023, approximately 40,901 people died in motor vehicle crashes. This figure absolutely dwarfs the 995 total railroad-related deaths in the same year, which include freight, commuter, and intercity rail. To put it plainly: for every one person killed in a railroad-related incident in 2023, roughly 41 people died in a motor vehicle crash.
While you highlight Brightline’s impact on pedestrians near tracks, the danger to pedestrians from cars is far more pervasive and deadly. In 2022, an estimated 7,522 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles in the U.S.—the highest number in over 40 years. This means over 7,500 pedestrians died due to cars in a single year, compared to the 182 total fatalities over several years attributed to Brightline (which, as discussed previously, are overwhelmingly due to trespassing or bypassing safety measures, not operational failure).
Pedestrian transportation is relatively “insignificant” in the U.S., accounting for a very small percentage of total daily trips compared to driving. Despite this low mode share, the sheer number of pedestrian deaths caused by vehicles underscores a profound and systemic safety problem on our roads. If “fault doesn’t matter,” and the goal is simply to “fix problems,” then the ethical and logical imperative would be to focus disproportionately on the system causing tens of thousands of deaths annually—our vast network of roads and motor vehicles—rather than concentrating on a rail line whose external fatalities, while serious, represent a much smaller and distinctly different kind of safety challenge.
Dismissing fault in accidents prevents us from diagnosing the true problems. For rail, the predominant issue is trespassing and grade crossing circumvention, which requires solutions like improved fencing, public education, and addressing mental health challenges. For motor vehicles, the problem is widespread driver error, vehicle design, and road infrastructure.
Your argument, if applied consistently, would demand an overwhelming focus on reforming road safety to protect pedestrians, given the astronomical death toll there. Selective application of your own principle doesn’t “fix the problems”—it merely redirects attention.
“All of these deaths are a tragedy, as are the 24,941 people who have died and the 1.85 million people who have been injured in car accidents on Florida’s roads since Brightline began operation.”
https://x.com/the_transit_guy/status/1945163561707217384
Clearly, since being a pedestrian is so dangerous, we need to ban walking anywhere and make people drive in cars instead.
/s