Wenzhou Train Accident

[Suzaku]

With the lively debate about the accuracy of history books, it got me thinking about the Wenzhou train accident.

The numbers of dead and injured reported by the Wenzhou train accident is approx. 40 dead and 200 injured. And it will most likely be recorded in the history books as such.

My question is does anyone believe that when two high speed trains collide - you only have casualty numbers of 40 dead and 200 injured? I don't.

Wenzhou Train 2.jpg
Wenzhou Train.jpg

[Trien Chieu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision

To be exact, there were 40 deaths and at least 192 people were hospitalised, including 12 who were severely injured.
To answer your question, my answer is YES, I believe it. There is nothing to hide. 40 deaths and at least 192 injured is a pretty high number. Perhaps the accident occurred not during peak hour so not that many people were in the trains. Suzaku, life is precious so 40 lives lost is a big tragedy.

[Ian Liew]

It wasn't head-on, was it? One was stopped and the other came from behind. There might have been last ditch attempts at braking, or maybe the trains don't carry that many passengers at once.. all can contribute to reducing the death and injury toll.

[Suzaku]

I am by no means minimizing this tragedy or the loss of life through this accident. I am, merely, questioning the validity of the numbers released by the Chinese government. For an accident of this scope, the loss of life is miraculously low, to the point of being unbelievable. But miracles are known to happen; hence, I posed the question.

High speed trains reach a maximum speed of 200 mph. Given the train was nearing a station when the collision occur, we could assume that the train was probably not traveling at 200 mph. However the force of the collision was enough to derail 4 carriages and send 3 of them tumbling down a 30 feet ledge and leaving one carriage derailed and hanging over the shoulder of the raised tracks. This accident was not a bumper tap between the trains.

It is very unlikely that a person can survive the collision and descent down the ledge. But miraculously a 2 year old girl was recovered alive from the rubble. (Albeit after the official rescue efforts were called off, and only do to the persistence of an officer that refused to stop searching.) I’m not saying that you cannot survive the fall, but the survival rate is not high.

According to Time magazine, the combined numbers of passengers on both trains are 1,630. (No, I’m not taking this as fact merely because an American magazine reported it, but from experience as a traveler in Asia and being packed like a sardine every single time, this number sounds reasonable.)

Hence, I find the numbers of 40 dead and 200 injured to be unrealistic. This strikes me as the government attempting to minimize the scope of the accident to quickly dismiss the issue and continue building more railways. This is only magnified with the sloppy rescue efforts, settlement talks before the victims are buried, and the lack of investigation.

The conspiracy theorist in me can find several reasons for minimizing the number of deaths. (1) China has bigger plans for this high speed train network, hoping to not only connect the rural areas of China but extend it to Singapore, Europe, and central Asia; (2) China was planning to sell this technology to other countries (Good Luck); and (3) save face.

[mich]

I just want to say that I have never been on a packed like sardines high speed rail in China on working days.