How safe is it to travel by train?

When you need to get around Washington or the rest of the country, you have several options available to you depending on finances and your timeline, and you may decide, at least sometimes, to get to your destination by train. It may trouble you to know, however, that traveling by train is actually more dangerous than traveling by plane, and taking the bus, too, is typically a safer transportation option.

According to Time, traveling by train is actually four times more dangerous than traveling by bus, with 13 people losing their lives in Amtrak train crashes in the United States in 2014. That same year, there were only 0.11 bus fatalities for every billion passenger miles covered and only 0.7 commercial airplane fatalities for every billion passenger miles covered, revealing that both commercial air travel and bus travel are safer than train travel.

While traveling by train may not be as safe as you might want to think, it is significantly safer than traveling by car. Automotive travel is, by far, the most dangerous form of transportation, with more than 30,000 people losing their lives in car wrecks in 2014. To put this in perspective against the number of lives lost in commercial airplane and bus crashes, there were 7.3 automotive deaths in 2014 for every billion passenger miles covered.

If safety is your top priority, it may serve you well to travel by plane or bus whenever possible. Your risk of a crash increases when you opt to travel by train, and it increases even further when you make your way around by car.

This information is for educational purposes and is not a substitute or replacement for legal advice.