“I apologise to everyone for raising the one subject which has caused BJ Mann to go into rant mode again and bore us all silly, namely the fact that rail travel is far safer than car travel, and that the majority of deaths on railways are of suicides, trespassers, or others who choose to ignore warning signs at level crossings. All he has proven is that, for some reason, he has a pathalogical hatred of vehicles which run on rails (like Mrs Thatcher). Don't know why, but we should all pity him for that.”

“
No wonder you can't manage to understand what I write, never mind formulate a reasoned response.

I can't speak for Austrian mathematicians, but I suspect that most of us just aren't sufficiently interested in your rants to read all those reams. Still, since you clearly derive close personal pleasure from writing it, don't let the complete lack of a readership put you off. If you like, you can even maintain the amusing fiction that some extensive silent majority" are hanging on your every syllable. snort. sorry.”

“Still struggling?

How about if the government switched us to canal transport for all North South traffic between London and Edinburgh.

And to make barge travel as safe as possible they removed all the bridges and fenced off the canals and made it illegal for the public who weren't passengers to go anywhere near the canals.

So that anyone who wanted to reach the other half of a community divided by the canals (just like those horrible roads which divide communities, and unlike the railways which join them!) had to go round London or Edinburgh and back again.

If no canal passengers whatsoever died on the canals, but hundreds of thousands of tresspassing kids, people trying to rejoin their communities, and suicides, drowned in the canals every year, would you argue that the government had delivered the safest transport system you could possibly imagine?”

“Still struggling to comprehend?

OK, here's another one:

Suppose they converted diesel trains to run on bio-fuels and ran them on, ooooh, say, baby oil.

And there was never a passenger death, or even a pedestrian death, in a billion miles of travel.

Would that make it justifiable in your mind?

Even though they were liquidising a dozen babies to fuel it for every mile travelled?”

“Here's another one for you to struggle to think about:

"They might be relevant when looking at the number of PASSENGERS killed on the railway, to compare the relative safety of TRAVELLING by rail with the safety of TRAVELLING by road."

Many people will have heard the claim that a PoW die for every sleeper laid on the Burma Railway.

But according to one of the original Environmentalists, Henry Thoreau, a Yankee or an Irishman died for every sleeper laid for the American railways.

And he wasn't talking about across the Wild West, but New England!

If it cost the life of a person for every sleeper laid in the UK today, would even the fact that no passengers ever died at all on that railway make it "safe"?

And if not, how does that stack up aginst your "argument"?”

“PS, feel free to dig ut the total vehicle mileage on the rail roads for me and we can do it properly then.

The only reason I use passenger mileage is I happened to have had the figures when I first started discussing this area of transport safety and I can't be a, a, bothered to find the vehicle stats.

So feel free to enlighten us with the comparison of train and road driver pedestrian killings.

And remember, the road driver isn't allowed to claim that a pedestrian shouldn't be included in the road fatality figures because he ran under the wheels of my car.

Just as he isn't allowed the defense that he was going too fast to stop in time.”

“Yes, John, of course, John.

Except that you've forgotten a few teensy weensy ickle points.

Like if you want to ignore the third that are suicides, or even the two thirds that might be (that's 66.67%, John), you'd have to deduct the around 85% of road pedestrian fatalities who threw themselves under the wheels of a car in one sense or another.

And if you are going to ignore the rail fatalities who shouldn't have been where they were then you are also going to have to deduct all the road pedestrian fatalities who shouldn't have been where they were either.

Which is probably most of them.

Which will possibly *STILL* leave the railways more dangerous per passenger mile and probably per vehicle mile.

Or didn't you bother reading those bits of my posts before coming back with your spin and propaganda?

I suppose you think they should scrap the laws about prescription only provision of dangerous drugs and the laws about child proof containers because most of the deaths from them are either suicides or they shouldn't have take so many of the pills it would kill them?!?!?!?

The simple fact is that if you took a typical road carrying the same amount of passengers and goods as a typical railway line there would be fewer pedestrian deaths, and probably fewer deaths in total.

And if you took a typical train driver, and compared him with a typical car driver doing the same mileage, the train driver would be responsible for several times as many deaths.

DESPITE THE RAIL ROAD BEING FENCED OFF

In most people's minds, when given the straight facts, that makes the rail roads vastly more dangerous than the ordinary ones.

The only reason the rail roads are perceived by the public as safer is that the rail lobby hides and disguises the real rail road figures, and continually compares the number of passengers that die in their solid steel and cast iron 100 ton battering rams, that can plough through vans and cars, never mind pedestrians and prams, without even spilling the passengers BR tea, never mind a drop of their blood, on 11,000 miles of track, with the total road deaths on hundreds of thousands of miles of road, from millions of vehicles, doing around a hundred *BILLION* miles each year.

You might as well claim that racing main battle tanks through childrens playgrounds after school is a safe way to travel because non of the passengers will get killed and the kids shouldn't have been playing there after hours!”

“It included, for example, the contempt in which I hold those who..... are being laughed at by someone who doesn't really care a jot about them.

No wonder you can't manage to understand what I write, never mind formulate a reasoned response.”

“Whatever is BJ Mann talking about? He needs to get his brain into gear. The cumulative number of rail passenger miles travelled is nothing to do with the number of suicides who choose to die on a railway line, or trespassers killed on a railway line. They might be relevant when looking at the number of PASSENGERS killed on the railway, to compare the relative safety of TRAVELLING by rail with the safety of TRAVELLING by road. But when looking at the number of deaths of suicides and criminal trespassers, the cumulative number of rail passenger miles travelled is completely irrelevant and utterly meaningless. Some suicides and trespassers are killed by freight trains, on lines where no passenger trains ever run.”

“DVision, Gedling Grove

If the tram were not subsidised it would cost over £5.00 per trip. How is that cheap in any context.
The tram is a tool used by the Labour controlled council to keep their core voters mobile. I for one am sick of subsidising the under classes”