A lot of words have been written about how horribly FRA safety regulations cripple US main line passenger railway budgets (and you should read them!), but it's also important to remember that even as a safety regulator, the FRA fails. You have to see it to believe it:
As the twentieth century has progressed, vehicles have gotten safer as they've gotten lighter. The key is to use materials intelligently, absorbing impacts strategically with things like crumple zones and the basic energy management system in this video, to prevent things like telescoping. Building vehicles out of lighter, more crash-absorbant materials costs much less than when you're deriving all your safety from sheer bulk, as with the so-called "conventional equipment" in the video (which in another country might be called "antique equipment"). Lighter designs also improve fuel efficiency and do less damage to roads and railroad tracks, further reducing costs and greenhouse emissions. Oh yeah, and obviously it's safer.
Your car is built this way, as are trains used all around the world. Except, that is, in the United States. The FRA, America's main line passenger rail (that is, Amtrak and commuter railroads) safety regulator, has yet to recognize that there are ways to protect passengers from crashes besides entombing them in obese railcars. And so we're stuck with these expensive, dangerous, polluting 1950's-era behemoths.
(Video via Paulus Magnus at Reason & Rail.)
