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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

Train derailments are already on a long downward trend since they peaked in 1978: https://data.transportation.gov/dataset/Railroad-Equipment-A...

This legislation was kind of a hot-blooded fast-twitch response to the East Palestine disaster, but it's not exactly clear that it would have done anything other than address some of the superficial concerns at the time.

Since then the DOT has already updated several of their derailment policies, the EPA has updated their procedure for burning off hazardous chemicals.

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Another user responded here asking if this was the result of increased regulation considered burdensome at the time it was introduced and then deleted the question, presumably after reading more about it. The question itself is interesting though: the period after the 1970s saw substantially decreased regulation for railways in general and a loosening in how security regulation was approached for a massive decline in railroad safety issues. I.e. the market was heavily over-regulated at the time and prescriptive regulation had been having the opposite of the intended effect. I'm highlighting this not as one who despises regulation, quite the opposite, but just because it's a good point to highlight reacting to every accident with more regulation is not the right way to approach further regulation.

https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/16...

It can make sense. I come from a country(Romania) where fire regulations are insanely strict and complicated. If the fire department comes to inspect, they will 100% find issues and fine you. The result is that the most sane and basic requirements get drowned in a sea of useless regulations, so you end up with escape doors that are locked, missing alerting systems, flammable materials where there shouldn't be etc.

I need a more detailed explanation of what you're suggesting here: I get that having too many regulations can create a situation where an inspector will always find fault, that makes sense: but unless inspectors have a cap on the number of issues they're allowed to report, which doesn't seem sane under any circumstance, why would that then cause more obvious basic regulations to be unenforced? If anything I would expect the opposite.

I can’t speak for Romania, but if the outcome of any mistake is that you get shutdown, there’s an implicit cap on how much you can get punished.

There are 2 things that happen: you bribe the firefighters(rarer), OR you just continue functioning without their signoff(more common).

Because most businesses were not compliant all of the sudden, the government couldn't just shut down everything, so they allow businesses and buildings to function without authorization, simply by filling in an affidavit saying you acknowledge firefighters didn't approve and you continue at your own risk. Even the capitol building, where the MPs "work" everyday, is without proper authorization! When you go to a nightclub, you don't know if they have an actual permit from the firefighters, or a mere affidavit...and you end up with disasters like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colectiv_nightclub_fire

This whole situation made everyone very complacent with fire safety, to the point it's worse than if people and businesses would have been left alone.

Holy fuck. That’s absolutely insane.

it is...the entirety of fire marshal and firefights laws being replaced by just 4-5 rules would save countless lives:

- build secondary escape doors and don't lock/block them

- have smoke detectors in every room

- have fire extinguishers in every building, and for large buildings for every 200sqm or so, and every floor.

For large commercial spaces, add sprinklers.

These are bare minimum things, but it would be better than what it's like today. And from there, they could slowly add more rules where it makes sense, and shutdown whoever is not implementing these.

Some confounding factors on derailment statistics:

* Individual trains are longer than ever, which means that they carry more than ever. That means bigger derailments in absolute terms with a larger potential variety of components, even if the overall magnitude of derailments has decreased.

* Deferred line maintenance and other cost-cutting measures (like running longer trains with just one or two engineers) means more severe derailments (more cars off the rails, more extensive damage, fewer people available to detect or remediate problems).

Sounds like you might be interested, or already a fan.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39352570

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