Should there be a safer way to transport dangerous chemicals and hazardous substances?

Can consider some sort of a pipeline installed underground.

Pipelines are notorious for leaks, and when they do happen, they’re catastrophic because of the volumes of liquid involved.

I just think we should hold the people at fault to repair the damage EXACTLY as it was instead of externalizing the costs onto the public. If oil companies had to pay out trillions of dollars, when oil spilled, you can be damn sure they’d design containers that were bomb-proof.

@gorillapaws I like your way of thinking! Make the oil co. pay for it ALL and not tax the people or get federal dollars to help out. nice!

You can’t use pipelines because you would have to figure out a way to clean hundreds of miles of pipe in between each chemical. Otherwise, combining chemicals would cause an explosion.
I have no idea what other way to move chemicals though.

Trains can do it fine, but they need to be properly maintained and inspected, and of shorter lengths. Hot spot derailments are just what happens when the system is stressed. The workers tried to strike over this stuff, but congress saved Christmas and stopped it from happening.

I certainly am not familiar with the intricate workings of the railroad industry, but if they have known of defaults or failures in their systems, shouldn’t they have addressed them? Or at least steered the trains around the problem areas? “Hey Joe ya know the bridge is out, right?” “It’s okay, we’ll just run the train extra fast and jump it!”

…but if they have known of defaults or failures in their systems, shouldn’t they have addressed them?

Ahhh, the innocence of youth…

Of course they should have addressed them! Unfortunately, that’s the way the world works, and why entire species are wiped out, and why fires are burning uncontrollably in the rainforests, and why children go to bed every night hungry and can’t think properly in school, and on and on and on. Too many people believe in the almighty dollar over health and the environment and people.

Sure. What do you suggest?

First off simply containers that are made better that are tested to much more rigorous specifications like actual derailments and road collisions etc. To make sure they don’t leak, break or explode. Or ship them in smaller containers. Ship them in much less quantities and farther apart so “if” something did happen there’s no chain reaction to destroy entire acres of land. Perhaps stop using such horrible dangerous chemicals in large quantities in the first place. I’m sure there are bigger brains that can come up with something besides “what’s in it for me?”

^ those are all good suggestions, but they all fail that all too important objection: “that decreases profits”.

@ragingloli After enough people and animals die and property is lost and irreplaceable environmental damage is done, someday profits will fall and so will “they” too bad it has to come to that to pry out a little morality from the sharks but I hope it will happen one day.

I agree with @ragingloli – they are good ideas, but no one is going to do anything that affects the bottom line, and that’s $$$.

@Dig_Dug
No doubt about that. Too bad that does not matter to an economic system, and the principal participants thereof, whose essential goal is infinite growth. What matters to them is not long term stability, but short term profit, which has to increase ad infinitum.

Omg, the issue isn’t that we need crash resistant cars. There are multiple systems designed to address this known issue with trains. When they are not properly maintained, usually due to insufficient staffing, they fail.

My point is when the cars run off the track they still explode like the problem in Ohio. Yes well maintained tracks and this would not have happened BUT it did happen and the cars STILL exploded. Had the cars been designed to not break and explode they would not have broke and exploded.

Yeah, why don’t we just make airplanes out of the stuff they make the black box out of? When planes crash, they should be designed to be fine.

The fact is we are dealing with huge forces at work, much mass, much speed, and you can’t design your way out of that reality. If it crashes, it’s always going to be bad. You can build the cars as well as you can, but they won’t ever work every time, and over-engineering would cause it’s own problems. Weight for one, is always an issue, and a factor in most derailments. Much better to institute vigorous protocols, and update them regularly, like the airline industry. It’s inexcusable that the relatively simple job of keeping a train on the tracks is apparently so much harder than keeping a plane in the air.

@Smashley I think you are overexaggerating that is it easier to keep “a plane in the air.” than it is to keep a train on the tracks.
There is infinite more engineering and safeguards that go into air travel than commuter train travel, let alone freight rail service.
The NTSB report is about 2 weeks out but initial thoughts are a failed wheel bearing. Yes, more inspection and detection systems are needed to not have something like this happen again.
The reality is, everything can fail and ultimately will fail. Your car tires fail and you hope its not at the wrong time and you are in a safe place. Your brakes on your bike may fail. Do you inspect these things regularly? No.
This is why inspection and maintenance are so key to any and all these things so catastrophic events do not occur or can be sensed and minimized or mitigated.

@Smashley Why don’t we make planes so they glide a lot better if the engines fail, then not drop like a rock. Make some kind of built in suppression system that with put out the fire if one happens. Stronger fuel tanks with several separate explosion proof compartments. I don’t know, I’m not an aeronautics engineer (I just play one on the internet) but we all know what the real answer is. $$$

@Forever_Free – but you agree with the premise, that it’s not that we haven’t built train cars well, but that rail carriers are not performing adequate levels of maintenance to keep us safe.

Hot spots are the most most common cause of derailments. These are caused when improper maintenance leads to a situation where a wheel is getting too much friction. It will catch on fire and it will derail. There are supposed to be heat sensors that notify operators of the problem, but surprise, those have to be in working order too.

Seems like something the workers should have tried to stop. Oh, wait, they did.

@Dig_Dug – and what modern industries don’t operate to make profit? Sure we can blindly regulate whatever we want, but if it makes an industry fundamentally unprofitable, say goodbye to that industry. Or at least be prepared for much higher prices and weak economies.

@Smashley When your spouse dies or your kids and your farm land is destroyed or your friends are suddenly gone. Somehow that seems to be left out of the equation an inconvenient truth that no one talks about.

You can blame accountants for things like this. I’m being completely serious. The corporate model has been that engineers call the shots less and less and the people holding the purse strings have been making the decisions. Managers tend to be MBAs and are often more in bed with the accounting departments because of their backgrounds. There is a big disconnect between what they know about what really happens at the ground level and what they’re trying to accomplish for their company. Technicians, safety personnel, engineers, operators….they don’t want to cut corners. Technically incompetent managers order them to either directly or indirectly. They’re often not around and have moved on to the next job before the consequences of their decisions happen. This is the core problem. There needs to be engineered, organizational controls that keep the accounting from essentially being in charge. We know how to transport things safely. When there is a disaster like this, it’s always corner cutting and that trail leads to an office and a spreadsheet and an accountant. Always.

I don’t hate accountants, I have an MBA, I know how they think. They’re not inclined to understand the larger consequences of what cutting costs does to health and safety. Often it takes years of cost/corner cutting to cause an event like this. Think of it like this: Swiss cheese has holes, with slices of cheese stacked there is a barrier. Accountants want to increase the size and number of holes and sell the cheese at the same price. Engineers tell management they can’t keep doing this because the holes eventually line up, let something through and cause an event. Nobody on the ground level is surprised at all when it happens.

More sensible goverment regulations and policies might make it safer…but a lot of Americans vote for politicians who decry goverment regulations so maybe if they stop doing that?

@Blackwater_Park Good post. I just want to add that CEOs and the Board of Directors are above the accountants, job-wise. They’re the ones who nag the accountants to reduce costs because they don’t want to be caught holding the bag when the investors come complaining. Their jobs depend on keeping costs low. What a great world it would be if everyone on the ‘assembly line’ cared more about people and the environment than saving money. The problem is, could the average citizen afford the services?

love your swiss cheese analogy!

@smudges The cheese thing is something I thought of when dealing with this sort of situation and studying probability and stuff. The old saying “a lot of holes in the swiss cheese had to line up for that to happen” is true. If the holes are small, infrequent and there are lots of slices the probability of an event getting through the holes is essentially zero. As you remove slices, increase the hole size and frequency of holes that probability at some point becomes more and more likely. Often there is nobody monitoring that risk. CEOs are often business people and not technical people. Humanity is in a technical quandary right now. We are so technical in nature that it’s very hard for people to understand all the risks. I hate to say this but, people without much technical background or skills in risk analysis just should not be in charge at all with infrastructure and safety related things like transporting chemicals. It’s not a capitalism thing either. This happens everywhere.

@Dig_Dug – the consequences of an economy that doesn’t work, are also death and destruction.

Over regulating rail car construction would not have the effect you would want. Properly regulating would be enforcing regular maintenance, mandatory staffing levels, and lower loads.

@Smashley I completely agree that they are not doing proper maintenance and getting away with it. Truckers would as well if the NTSB didn’t crack down on them due to accidents.
There are some Bus services that are also terrible and prone to accidents. I won’t fly certain air carriers either for the same reason. Qantas is a prime example.
Everything can be engineered and monitored. Are some better than others, Yes.
I commuted on a train for 10 years and thought about my safety being in the hands of others almost everyday I got on the train. It is the same for driving a car. Every year at inspection time I wonder what will be found. Thankful for a rigid vehicle inspection in my state to keep some cars off the road.
Is it foolproof. Nope. I won’t even go into Tesla and autonomous driving as that is a prime example.