>"modern" doesn't mean better.
No, but
>Rather than just bulk up, European and Asian trains instead are designed to absorb impacts and avoid collisions in the first place. And they have better safety records.
does.
No, but
>Rather than just bulk up, European and Asian trains instead are designed to absorb impacts and avoid collisions in the first place. And they have better safety records.
does.
The "better safety records" bit, if true, is a great argument that American trains need to be more able to withstand crashes. We might need to make them more impact-resistant, not less impact-resistant.
No, we don't. Industrial design has only recently begun to take that approach. The old way is "bigger is better," and is the approach taken by, for example, school buses in the USA which have an insane safety record. I believe this year was the first time in over a decade that there was even a single on-board casualty in a US school bus.