Kitabı oku: «Notes on Railroad Accidents», sayfa 13

The year 1871, however, represented by no means a fair average. On the contrary, it indicated what may fairly be considered an excessive degree of danger, exciting nervous apprehensions in the breasts of those even who were not constitutionally timid. To reach what may be considered a normal average, therefore, it would be more proper to include a longer period in the computation. Take, for instance, the nine years, 1871-79, during which alone has any effort been made to reach statistical accuracy in respect to Massachusetts railroad accidents. During those nine years, speaking in round numbers and making no pretence at anything beyond a general approximation, some 303,000,000 passenger journeys of 13 miles each have been made on the railroads and within the state. Of these 51 have resulted in death and 308 in injuries to persons from causes over which they had no control. The average distance, therefore, traveled by all, before death happened to any one, was about 80,000,000 miles, and that travelled before any one was either injured or killed was about 10,800,000.

The Revere disaster of 1871, however, as has been seen, brought about important changes in the methods of operating the railroads of Massachusetts. Consequently the danger incident to railroad traveling was materially reduced; and in the next eight years (1872-9) some 274,000,000 passenger journeys were made within the limits of the state. The Wollaston disaster of October, 1878, was included in this period, during which 223 persons were injured and 21 were killed. The average journey for these years resulting in any injury to a passenger was close upon 15,000,000 miles, while that resulting in death was 170,000,000.

But it may fairly be asked, – What, after all, do these figures mean? – They are, indeed, so large as to exceed comprehension; for, after certain comparatively narrow limits are passed the practical infinite is approached, and the mere adding of a few more ciphers after a numeral conveys no new idea. On the contrary, the piling up of figures rather tends to weaken than to strengthen a statement, for to many it suggests an idea of ridiculous exaggeration. Indeed, when a few years ago a somewhat similar statement to that just made was advanced in an official report, a critic undertook to expose the fallacy of it in the columns of a daily paper by referring to a case within the writer's own observation in which a family of three persons had been killed on their very first journey in a railroad car. It is not, of course, necessary to waste time over such a criticism as this. Railroad accidents continually take place, and in consequence of them people are killed and injured, and of these there may well be some who are then making their first journey by rail; but in estimating the dangers of railroad traveling the much larger number who are not killed or injured at all must likewise be taken into consideration. Any person as he may be reading this page in a railroad car may be killed or injured through some accident, even while his eye is glancing over the figures which show how infinitesimal his danger is; but the chances are none the less as a million to one that any particular reader will go down to his grave uninjured by any accident on the rail, unless it be occasioned by his or her own carelessness.

Admitting, therefore, that ill luck or hard fortune must fall to the lot of certain unascertainable persons, yet the chances of incurring that ill fortune are so small that they are not materially increased by any amount of traveling which can be accomplished within the limits of a human life. So far from exhausting a fair average immunity from accident by constant traveling, the statistics of Massachusetts during the last eight years would seem to indicate that if any given person were born upon a railroad car, and remained upon it traveling 500 miles a day all his life, he would, with average good fortune, be somewhat over 80 years of age before he would be involved in any accident resulting in his death or personal injury, while he would attain the highly respectable age of 930 years before being killed. Even supposing that the most exceptional average of the Revere year became usual, a man who was killed by an accident at 70 years of age should, unless he were fairly to be accounted unlucky, have accomplished a journey of some 440 miles every day of his life, Sundays included, from the time of his birth to that of his death; while even to have brought him within the fair liability of any injury at all, his daily journey should have been some 120 miles. Under the conditions of the last eight years his average daily journey through the three score years and ten to entitle him to be killed in an accident at the end of them would be about 600 miles.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE RAILROAD DEATH RATE

In connection with the statistics of railroad casualties it is not without interest to examine the general vital statistics of some considerable city, for they show clearly enough what a large degree of literal truth there was in the half jocose proposition attributed to John Bright, that the safest place in which a man could put himself was inside a first-class railroad carriage of a train in full motion. Take the statistics of Boston, for instance, for the year 1878. During the four years 1875-8, it will be remembered, a single passenger only was killed on the railroads of Massachusetts in consequence of an accident to which he by his own carelessness in no way contributed.²⁷ The average number of persons annually injured, not fatally, during those years was about five.

Yet during the year 1878, excluding all cases of mere injury of which no account was made, no less than 53 persons came to their deaths in Boston from falling down stairs, and 37 more from falling out of windows; seven were scalded to death in 1878 alone. In the year 1874 seventeen were killed by being run over by teams in the streets, while the pastime of coasting was carried on at a cost of ten lives more. During the five years 1874-8 there were more persons murdered in the city of Boston alone than lost their lives as passengers through the negligence of all the railroad corporations in the whole state of Massachusetts during the nine years 1871-8; though in those nine years were included both the Revere and the Wollaston disasters, the former of which resulted in the death of 29, and the latter of 21 persons. Neither are the comparative results here stated in any respect novel or peculiar to Massachusetts. Years ago it was officially announced in France that people were less safe in their own houses than while traveling on the railroads; and, in support of this somewhat startling proposition, statistics were produced showing fourteen cases of death of persons remaining at home and there falling over carpets, or, in the case of females, having their garments catch fire, to ten deaths on the rail. Even the game of cricket counted eight victims to the railroad's ten.

It will not, of course, be inferred that the cases of death or injury to passengers from causes beyond their control include by any means all the casualties involved in the operation of the railroad system. On the contrary, they include but a very small portion of them. The experience of the Massachusetts roads during the seven years between September 30, 1871, and September 30, 1878, may again be cited in reference to this point. During that time there were but 52 cases of injury to passengers from causes over which they had no control, but in connection with the entire working of the railroad system no less than 1,900 cases of injury were reported, of which 1,008 were fatal; an average of 144 deaths a year. Of these cases, naturally, a large proportion were employés, whose occupation not only involves much necessary risk, but whose familiarity with risk causes them always to incur it even in the most unnecessary and foolhardy manner. During the seven years 293 of them were killed and 375 were reported as injured. Nor is it supposed that the list included by any means all the cases of injury which occurred. About one half of the accidents to employés are occasioned by their falling from the trains when in motion, usually from freight trains and in cold weather, and from being crushed between cars while engaged in coupling them together. From this last cause alone an average of 27 casualties are annually reported. One fact, however, will sufficiently illustrate how very difficult it is to protect this class of men from danger, or rather from themselves. As is well known, on freight trains they are obliged to ride on the tops of the cars; but these are built so high that their roofs come dangerously near the bottoms of the highway bridges, which cross the track sometimes in close proximity to each other. Accordingly many unfortunate brakemen were killed by being knocked off the trains as they passed under these bridges. With a view to affording the utmost possible protection against this form of accident, a statute was passed by the Massachusetts legislature compelling the corporations to erect guards at a suitable distance from every overhead bridge which was less than eighteen feet in the clear above the track. These guards were so arranged as to swing lightly across the tops of the cars, giving any one standing upon them a sharp rap, warning him of the danger he was in. This warning rap, however, so annoyed the brakemen that the guards were on a number of the roads systematically destroyed as often as they were put up; so that at last another law had to be passed, making their destruction a criminal offense. The brakemen themselves resisted the attempt to divest their perilous occupation of one of its most insidious dangers.

In this respect, however, brakemen differ in no degree from the rest of the community. On all hands railroad accidents seem to be systematically encouraged, and the wonder is that the list of casualties is not larger. In Massachusetts, for instance, even in the most crowded portions of the largest cities and towns, not only do the railroads cross the highways at grade, but whenever new thoroughfares are laid out the people of the neighborhood almost invariably insist upon their crossing the railroads at a grade and not otherwise. Not but that, upon theory and in the abstract, every one is opposed to grade-crossings; but those most directly concerned always claim that their particular crossing is exceptional in character. In vain do corporations protest and public officials argue; when the concrete case arises all neighborhoods become alike and strenuously insist on their right to incur everlasting danger rather than to have the level of their street broken. During the last seven years to September 30, 1878, 191 persons have been injured, and 98 of them fatally injured, at these crossings in Massachusetts, and it is certain as fate that the number is destined to annually increase. What the result in a remote future will be, it is not now easy to forecast. One thing only would seem certain: the time will come when the two classes of traffic thus recklessly made to cross each other will at many points have to be separated, no matter at what cost to the community which now challenges the danger it will then find itself compelled to avoid.

The heaviest and most regular cause of death and injury involved in the operation of the railroad system yet remains to be referred to; and again it is recklessness which is at the root of it, and this time recklessness in direct violation of law. The railroad tracks are everywhere favorite promenades, and apparently even resting-places, especially for those who are more or less drunk. In Great Britain physical demolition by a railroad train is also a somewhat favorite method of committing suicide, and that, too, in the most deliberate and cool-blooded manner. Cases have not been uncommon in which persons have been seen to coolly lay themselves down in front of an advancing train, and very neatly effect their own decapitation by placing their necks across the rail. In England alone, during the last seven years, there have been no less than 280 cases of death reported under the head of suicides, or an average of 40 each year, the number in 1878 rising to 60. In America these cases are not returned in a class by themselves. Under the general head of accidents to trespassers, however, that is, accidents to men, women and children, especially the latter, illegally lying, walking, or playing on the tracks or riding upon the cars, – under this head are regularly classified more than one third of all the casualties incident to working the Massachusetts railroads. During the last seven years these have amounted to an aggregate of 724 cases of injury, no less than 494 of which were fatal. Of course, very many other cases of this description, which were not fatal, were never reported. And here again the recklessness of the public has received further illustration, and this time in a very unpleasant way. Certain corporations operating roads terminating in Boston endeavored at one time to diminish this slaughter by enforcing the laws against walking on railroad tracks. A few trespassers were arrested and fined, and then the resentment of those whose wonted privileges were thus interfered with began to make itself felt. Obstructions were found placed in the way of night trains. The mere attempt to keep people from risking their lives by getting in the way of locomotives placed whole trains full of passengers in imminent jeopardy.

Undoubtedly, however, by far the most effective means of keeping railroad tracks from becoming foot-paths, and thus at once putting an end to the largest item in the grand total of the expenditure of life incident to the operation of railroads, is that secured by the Pennsylvania railroad as an unintentional corollary to its method of ballasting. That superb organization, every detail of whose wonderful system is a fit subject for study to all interested in the operation of railroads, has a roadway peculiar to itself. A principal feature in this is a surface of broken stone ballast, covering not only the space between the rails, but also the interval between the tracks as well as the road-bed on the outside of each track for a distance of some three feet. It resembles nothing so much as a newly macadamized highway. That, too, is its permanent condition. To walk on the sharp and uneven edges of this broken stone is possible, with a sufficient expenditure of patience and shoe-leather; but certainly no human being would ever walk there from preference, or if any other path could be found. Not only is it in itself, as a system of ballasting, looked upon as better than any other, but it confounds the tramp. Its systematic adoption in crowded, suburban neighborhoods would, therefore, answer a double purpose. It would secure to the corporations permanent road-beds exclusively for their own use, and obviate the necessity of arrests or futile threats to enforce the penalties of the law against trespassers. It seems singular that this most obvious and effective way of putting a stop to what is both a nuisance and a danger has not yet been resorted to by men familiar with the use of spikes and broken glass on the tops of fences and walls.

Meanwhile, taken even in its largest aggregate, the loss of life incident to the working of the railroad system is not excessive, nor is it out of proportion to what might reasonably be expected. It is to be constantly borne in mind, not only that the railroad performs a great function in modern life, but that it also and of necessity performs it in a very dangerous way. A practically irresistible force crashing through the busy hive of modern civilization at a wild rate of speed, going hither and thither, across highways and by-ways and along a path which is in itself a thoroughfare, – such an agency cannot be expected to work incessantly and yet never to come in contact with the human frame. Naturally, however, it might be a very car of Juggernaut. Is it so in fact? – To demonstrate that it is not, it is but necessary again to recur to the comparison between the statistics of railroad accidents and those which necessarily occur in the experience of all considerable cities. Take again those of Boston and of the railroad system of Massachusetts. These for the purpose of illustration are as good as any, and in their results would only be confirmed in the experience of Paris as compared with the railroad system of France, or in that of London as compared with the railroad system of Great Britain. During the eight years between September 30, 1870, and September 30, 1878, the entire railroad system of Massachusetts was operated at a cost of 1,165 lives, apart from all cases of injury which did not prove fatal. The returns in this respect also may be accepted as reasonably accurate, as the deaths were all returned, though the cases of merely personal injury probably were not. The annual average was 146 lives. During the ten years, 1868-78, 2,587 cases of death from accidental causes, or 259 a year, were recorded as having taken place in the city of Boston. In other words, the annual average of deaths by accident in the city of Boston alone exceeds that consequent on running all the railroads of the state by eighty per cent. Unless, therefore, the railroad system is to be considered as an exception to all other functions of modern life, and as such is to be expected to do its work without injury to life or limb, this showing does not constitute a very heavy indictment against it.

CHAPTER XXIII.
AMERICAN AS COMPARED WITH FOREIGN RAILROAD ACCIDENTS

Up to this point, the statistics and experience of Massachusetts only have been referred to. This is owing to the fact that the railroad returns of that state are more carefully prepared and tabulated than are those of any other state, and afford, therefore, more satisfactory data from which to draw conclusions. The territorial area from which the statistics are in this case derived is very limited, and it yet remains to compare the results deduced from them with those derived from the similar experience of other communities. This, however, is not an easy thing to do; and, while it is difficult enough as respects Europe, it is even more difficult as respects America taken as a whole. This last fact is especially unfortunate in view of the circumstance that, in regard to railway accidents, the United States, whether deservedly or not, enjoy a most undesirable reputation. Foreign authorities have a way of referring to our "well-known national disregard of human life," with a sort of complacency, at once patronizing and contemptuous, which is the reverse of pleasing. Judging by the tone of their comments, the natural inference would be that railroad disasters of the worst description were in America matters of such frequent occurrence as to excite scarcely any remark. As will presently be made very apparent, this impression, for it is only an impression, can, so far as the country as a whole is concerned, neither be proved nor disproved, from the absence of sufficient data from which to argue. As respects Massachusetts, however, and the same statement may perhaps be made of the whole belt of states north of the Potomac and the Ohio, there is no basis for it. There is no reason to suppose that railroad traveling is throughout that region accompanied by any peculiar or unusual degree of danger.

The great difficulty, just referred to, in comparing the results deduced from equally complete statistics of different countries, lies in the variety of the arbitrary rules under which the computations in making them up are effected. As an example in point, take the railroad returns of Great Britain and those of Massachusetts. They are in each case prepared with a great deal of care, and the results deduced from them may fairly be accepted as approximately correct. As respects accidents, the number of cases of death and of personal injury are annually reported, and with tolerable completeness, though in the latter respect there is probably in both cases room for improvement. The whole comparison turns, however, on the way in which the entire number of passengers annually carried is computed. In Great Britain, for instance, in 1878, these were returned, using round numbers only, at 565,000,000, and in Massachusetts at 34,000,000. By dividing these totals by the number of cases of death and injury reported as occurring to passengers from causes beyond their control, we shall arrive apparently at a fair comparative showing as to the relative safety of railroad traveling in the two communities. The result for that particular year would have been that while in Great Britain one passenger in each 23,500,000 was killed, and one in each 481,600 injured from causes beyond their control, in Massachusetts none were killed and only one in each 14,000,000 was in any way injured. Unfortunately, however, a closer examination reveals a very great error in the computation, affecting every comparative result drawn from it. In the English returns no allowance whatever is made for the very large number of journeys made by season-ticket or commutation passengers, while in Massachusetts, on the contrary, each person of this class enters into the grand total as making two trips each day, 156 trips on each quarterly ticket, and 626 trips on each annual. Now in 1878 more than 418,000 holders of season tickets were returned by the railway companies of Great Britain. How many of these were quarterly and how many were annual travelers, does not appear. If they were all annual travelers, no less than 261,000,000 journeys should be added to the 565,000,000 in the returns, in order to arrive at an equal basis for a comparison between the foreign and the American roads: this method, however, would be manifestly inaccurate, so it only remains, in the absence of all reliable data, and for the purpose of comparison solely, to strike out from the Massachusetts returns the 8,320,727 season-ticket passages, which at once reduces by over 3,000,000 the number of journeys to each case of injury. As season-ticket passengers do travel and are exposed to danger in the same degree as trip-ticket passengers, no result is approximately accurate which leaves them out of the computation. At present, however, the question relates not to the positive danger or safety of traveling by rail, but to its relative danger in different communities.

Allowance for this discrepancy can, however, be made by adding to the English official results an additional nineteen per cent., that, according to the returns of 1877 and 1878, being the proportion of the season-ticket to other passengers on the roads of Great Britain. Taking then the Board of Trade returns for the eight years 1870-7, it will be found that during this period about one passenger in each 14,500,000 carried in that country has been killed in railroad accidents, and about one in each 436,000 injured. This may be assumed as a fair average for purpose of comparison, though it ought to be said that in Great Britain the percentage of casualties to passengers shows a decided tendency to decrease, and during the years 1877-8 the percentages of killed fell from one in 15,000,000 to one in 38,000,000 and those of injured from one in 436,000 to one in 766,000. The aggregates from which these results are deduced are so enormous, rising into the thousands of millions, that a certain degree of reliance can be placed on them. In the case of Massachusetts, however, the entire period during which the statistics are entitled to the slightest weight includes only eight years, 1872-9, and offers an aggregate of but 274,000,000 journeys, or but about forty per cent. of those included in the British returns of the single year 1878. During these years the killed in Massachusetts were one in each 13,000,000 and the injured one in each 1,230,000; – or, while the killed in the two cases were very nearly in the same proportion, – respectively one in 14.5, and one in 13, speaking in millions, – the British injured were really three to one of the Massachusetts.

The equality as respects the killed in this comparison, and the marked discrepancy as respects the injured is calculated at first sight to throw doubts on the fullness of the Massachusetts returns. There seems no good reason why the injured should in the one case be so much more numerous than in the other. This, however, is susceptible on closer examination of a very simple and satisfactory explanation. In case of accident the danger of sustaining slight personal injury is not so great in Massachusetts as in Great Britain. This is due to the heavier and more solid construction of the American passenger coaches, and their different interior arrangement. This fact, and the real cause of the large number of slightly injured, – "shaken" they call it, – in the English railroad accidents is made very apparent in the following extract from Mr. Calcroft's report for 1877; —

"It is no doubt a fact that collisions and other accidents to railway trains are attended with less serious consequences in proportion to the solidity of construction of passenger carriages. The accomodation and internal arrangements of third-class carriages, however, especially those used in ordinary trains, are defective as regards safety and comfort, as compared with many carriages of the same class on foreign railways. The first-class passenger, except when thrown against his opposite companion, or when some luggage falls upon him, is generally saved from severe contusion by the well-stuffed or padded linings of the carriages; whilst the second-class and third-class passenger is generally thrown with violence against the hard wood-work. If the second and third-class carriages had a high padded back lining, extending above the head of the passenger, it would probably tend to lesson the danger to life and limb which, as the returns of accidents show, passengers in carriages of this class are much exposed to in train accidents."²⁸

In 1878 the passenger journeys made in the second and third class carriages of the United Kingdom were thirteen to one of those made in first class carriages; – or, expressed in millions, there were but 41 of the latter to 523 of the former. There can be very little question indeed that if, during the last ten years, thirteen out of fourteen of the passengers on Massachusetts railroads had been carried in narrow compartments with wooden seats and unlined sides the number of those returned as slightly injured in the numerous accidents which occurred would have been at least three-fold larger than it was. If it had not been ten-fold larger it would have been surprising.

The foregoing comparison, relates however, simply to passengers killed in accidents for which they are in no degree responsible. When, however, the question reverts to the general cost in life and limb at which the railroad systems are worked and the railroad traffic is carried on to the entire communities served, the comparison is less favorable to Massachusetts. Taking the eight years of 1871-8, the British returns include 30,641 cases of injury, and 9,113 of death; while those of Massachusetts for the same years included 1,165 deaths, with only 1,044 cases of injury; in the one case a total of 39,745 casualties, as compared with 2,209 the other. It will, however be noticed that while in the British returns the cases of injury are nearly three-fold those of death, in the Massachusetts returns the deaths exceed the cases of injury. This fact in the present case cannot but throw grave suspicion on the completeness of the Massachusetts returns. As a matter of practical experience it is well known that cases of injury almost invariably exceed those of death, and the returns in which the disproportion is greatest, if no sufficient explanation presents itself, are probably the most full and reliable. Taking, therefore, the deaths in the two cases as the better basis for comparison, it will be found that the roads of Great Britain in the grand result accomplished seventeen-fold the work of those of Massachusetts with less than eight times as many casualties; had the proportion between the results accomplished and the fatal injuries inflicted been maintained, but 536 deaths instead of 1,165 would have appeared in the Massachusetts returns. The reason of this difference in result is worth looking for, and fortunately the statistical tables are in both cases carried sufficiently into detail to make an analysis possible; and this analysis, when made, seems to indicate very clearly that while, for those directly connected with the railroads, either as passengers or as employés, the Massachusetts system in its working involves relatively a less degree of danger than that of Great Britain, yet for the outside community it involves very much more. Take, for instance, the two heads of accidents at grade-crossings and accidents to trespassers, which have been already referred to. In Great Britain highway grade-crossings are discouraged. In Massachusetts they are practically insisted upon. The results of the policy pursued may in each case be read with sufficient distinctness in the bills of mortality. During the years 1872-7, of 1,929 casualties to persons on the railroads of Massachusetts, no less than 200 occurred at highway grade crossings. Had the accidents of this description in Great Britain been equally numerous in proportion to the larger volume of the traffic of that country, they would have resulted in over 3,000 cases of death or personal injury; they did in fact result in 586 such cases. In Massachusetts, again, to walk at will on any part of a railroad track is looked upon as a sort of prescriptive and inalienable right of every member of the community, irrespective of age, sex, color, or previous condition of servitude. Accordingly, during the six years referred to, this right was exercised at the cost of life or limb to 591 persons, – one in four of all the casualties which occurred in connection with the railroad system. In Great Britain the custom of using the tracks of railroads as a foot-path seems to exist, but, so far from being regarded as a right, it is practiced in perpetual terror of the law. Accordingly, instead of some 9,000 cases of death or injury from this cause during these six years, which would have been the proportion under like conditions in Massachusetts, the returns showed only 2,379. These two are among the most constant and fruitful causes of accident in connection with the railroad system of America. In great Britain their proportion to the whole number of casualties which take place is scarcely a seventh part of what it is in Massachusetts. Here they constitute very nearly fifty per cent. of all the accidents which occur; there they constitute but a little over seven. There is in this comparison a good deal of solid food for legislative thought, if American legislators would but take it in; for this is one matter the public policy in regard to which can only be fixed by law.