Trains and buses and seatbelts

I do love trains

A reader of The Costa Blanca News wrote a letter to the editor which resonated with me. He complains that at great expense trains and tracks are equipped to allow for travel at speeds up to 300 kph, but in all that preparation an obvious part of the safety precautions for the passenger has been overlooked. That being seatbelts.

In April and May I rode the AVE from Valencia to Madrid roundtrip. I thoroughly enjoyed riding the train and marvelled at how the trip has been reduced from more than three hours to just one hour and a half. Older Spanish residents can tell you they remember the time when getting between Valencia and Madrid was as much of an effort as getting to a country across the Atlantic is today.

When so much is made of the importance of safety belts in airplanes and cars we have to wonder why trains, especially the fast trains are not fitted with them. Older buses don't have them and the Metro is not fitted with them, so from the passenger's perspective it is very much a case of mixed messages.

Do seat belts save lives? Absolutely they do. We are all learning to stay buckled up while in the air. If you have ever experienced a sudden drop while flying, anyone who is not securely buckled in gets slammed against the ceiling, only to get slammed to the floor when the plane stablises. When on a bus that crashes into something, all the people keep going. That does not end well at all. In cars we step in and automatically buckle up. Anyone without his done up and the driver gets fined. I have delayed moving forward until my reluctant passenger has buckled up.

Lady Diana gave her life in proving the point that seat belts are important and that they must be used. We have certainly had as many examples as we need of what happens when there are no restraints, the most recent being the high speed train crash in Santiago de Compestela.

The question that troubles me concerning why there are no seatbelts on the AVE trains is: when travelling at 300 kph is surviability even possible, with or without seatbelts?

Maybe the answer is no, which is why they simply haven't bothered.

Life is all about risks!


Copyright (c)  2014   Eugene Carmichael