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Comment by Beldin | Hacker News Reader

You might as well ask why Wall Street doesn't prefer trains with 3 cars and 1 loc. Much safer - but not optimising their profits. A guy who hitches a 4th car beats everyone.

So trains are optimised for profit. Now if your trains never derail, that means you may still have safety margin. There may be profit for the taking!!!

So keep optimising till it goes wrong. Then, figure out the cost of "going wrong". Figure that into your margins. If you get 99% delivery with 110% profit, does that beat 100% delivery for 100% profit?

TL;DR: that's how free markets work in capitalism. They optimise for profit.

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Railroads are an old business where the safety and other operational considerations are well known.

The equation here is more like “I can increase margins 3% this quarter to get my bonus, but increase the risk of an incident that may harm or result in the death of an employee or disaster affecting the public by 15%”

The long game is that the railroad will lose money when they create a 9-figure incident. The short game is the management makes their money.

It's more than just profit. We need to move goods around. We use airplanes, trains, and trucks. All of those vehicles have imperfect safety. We accept that because we need a functioning economy.

It’s puzzling to me why you would defend these companies.

I suppose you don’t live near one of these lines or have to worry about some terrible accident or even a town-destroying explosion. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disas...)

My uncle worked for one of the large railroads for 32 years. He retired last year, along with every eligible employee in his division. The workplace injury rates in that division had climbed to the point that it didn’t make sense to do the job and risk death or serious injury.

> The long game is that the railroad will lose money when they create a 9-figure incident. The short game is the management makes their money.

Even if they do (and this is a BIG if when we see how many companies get bailed out of their bad decisions) they still have caused a 9 figure incident. Which could be a chemical spill or any number of other things that could cause serious environmental damage to the local communities. A fine that results in the destruction of the company is great and all, but they've still made the planet markedly worse through their negligence.

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