From what I've seen the majority of the deaths are either a. intentional or b. really not the trains fault. That's not to say it isn't horrible that it happens, but IMO the solution is train safety awareness (don't stop on a railway crossing!!!), and if anything building more high speed rail in the US will improve public awareness of how to be safe around trains.

> averaging one death every 13 days of service.

Holy Shit. That's beyond just terrible.

This is ultimately scaremongering. First off, safety was supposed to be addressed by government funds which it sounds like only recently were approved; there’s nothing fundamentally unsafe about rail when you actually build it properly. But even if this were the baseline figure, do we really need to compare the death rate of our highway system?

That’s indeed not high speed - high speed ( tgv) is closer to 200mph.