Passenger Rail Has an Accountability Problem

Federal officials are still investigating the cause of fatal Amtrak derailment in Washington state on Monday morning, but excessive speed seems to be an obvious factor. One less obvious factor: a lack of accountability.

On its maiden voyage on freshly upgraded tracks, a brand-new train traveling 50 miles south of Seattle peeled off the rails just outside an I-5 overpass. Officials have confirmed that the train was traveling 80 mph as it tried to negotiate a curve with a 30-mph speed limit. National Transportation Safety Board investigators will find out in time what, if any, other factors played a role—track problems, for example, are the number-one cause of train accidents. But the centrifugal force of a train hurtling nearly three times faster than its tracks are designed to support—that is, without the proper banking or curve radius—has caused many fatal incidents in the past. On Monday, the Cascade cars hurtled into the vehicle traffic on I-5 below. Three people are dead, and many have been hospitalized, some with serious injuries.