Railroad Collisions, a Deadly Story of Mismanaged Risk

Citizen-advocate George Swimmer spent twenty years investigating the causes behind railroad collisions. What he discovered is a tangled mess of both inadvertent and intentional mismanagement.

In "Railroad Collisions," Swimmer reveals his findings. He faults the railroads themselves for poor risk management, but the industry is by no means the only culpable party. The Federal Railroad Administration's timid dealings with railroad companies impairs meaningful changes, while the National Transportation Safety Board's findings in many of their accident investigations are woefully, fatally incorrect.

From commuter train collisions to engineer fatigue and a nationwide epidemic of incorrectly set safety crossing lights, Swimmer paints a picture of an industry willing to put complacency ahead of safety, often actively working against positive change.

Swimmer supports his arguments with concrete examples. His interviews with locomotive engineers and a former safety director are thought-provoking and hard-hitting, while discussions with the parents of children killed in preventable railroad accidents provide a compassionate glimpse into the human cost of mismanaged risk.

Doing for railway transportation what Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed" did for the automobile industry, "Railroad Collisions" is a sobering look at how mismanagement and misinformation endangers lives throughout America's sprawling rail system.