Source: Federal Rail Association (https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/query/TenYearAccidentIncidentOverview.aspx) DM me for the .csv file. Data is available from 1975 to 2022.

Tool: Basic Plot in R

The plot shows total hazmat train derailment from 1997 to 2022 in the United States. The total derailment is divided by the total number of miles driven by trains for that year.

The lowest hazmat derailment per total train miles was in 1986 at 79.6 hazmat derailments/10 million miles (450 total that year). Notably , the total employee hours worked has been steadily decreasing since 1975. I am unable to tell whether there has been an increase or decrease in derailments due to changes in regulation.

Hmmm... I wouldn't have expected a downward trend.

You could argue it was a downward trend until 2017 or so followed by an increase since then. I don’t know how well that might match with any changes in legislation though…

That’s the power of media.

Media always promotes hype without regard to the facts.

I'm happy someone made this because I'd been wondering what the hell was going on. I thought it may be confirmation bias but it may have not been either

Does this include mixed cargo trains, like the first one that derailed in Ohio early this year? Or is it the high hazard trains only?

My guess is that hot box detector technology (it senses wheelbearing temp, the cause of a lot of derailments) got a whole lot better untill the early to mid-2000s when “precision railroading” came into vouge. This basically means, cut jobs and therefore maintenance untill shit breaks, people and equipment to maximize profits. That Ohio car was hot at the last couple of detectors it passed. Their stated safety culture was a farce as they punished late trains instead of rewarding when overheated bearings were found. Case in point, walking SLOWLY back to the end of the train to check a hot bearing after failing a detector pass by, which would allow it cool off enough that it “passed” the in person inspection. Cutting that failed car out took more time then the slow walk and they would be punished for a late train. When you only reward ontime trains what the fuck do you think happens.

Except the East Palastine train wouldnt be counted here as it wasnt designated hazmat.... so unclear how much poison is really falling off the rails

All trains in the United States including ones without hazmat cargo. There's also total derailment data.

This is for hazmat train derailments up to 2022 (does not include 2023 data). The FRA also provides data for all derailments which follows a similar trend. The data does not account how much chemicals, oils, etc. was on each train, only # of derailments.

This does not account for impact, only total derailments. The accident in Ohio may have been the worse effects on the environment.

The title is misleading then, since this is all train derailment and not specifically hazmat train derailment.

Thanks for making this plot. I figured derailments occurred pretty frequently based on the constant reporting of them since the incident in East Palestine, but I had no data at all to back up that claim. It doesn’t seem they are happening all that more frequently, just that MSM has realized this is another type of disaster that drives traffic to their sites via clicks.

To be clear, not downplaying their significance or the hardship that individual communities experience as a result of them. It just feels incredibly cynical to all of a sudden begin reporting on every single one of them because they realized that “if it bleeds it leads” applies to trains as well as humans.

That makes sense. I did not have the data for total miles driven by only trains with hazmat. I used the assumption that the proportion of trains carrying hazmat stayed constant from year to year (maybe the not the best idea looking back). The trend for total derailments is very similar to the adjusted.

Compare that to other countries.

>derailments occurred pretty frequently

only in USA, about 1000 per year. In european countries it's single digits per year.

That's a good idea, I'll take a look this weekend.

Europe doesn’t have as nearly vast of a rail network.

On the conservative side of your European argument that means you have a derailment every two months (assuming 6 per year). Train derailments make news nationally in the US maybe once every 3-5 years. Thanks for proving my point by being a European exceptionalist!

Not so. There is currently about 260 000 km of railways in the US (of which about 150000 are 1st class), while there are 200 000 km in "Europe", which doesn't include places like the UK (over 15 000 km), so the two are very similar in terms of route length (adding in Canada and Mexico would make North America seem quite a bit bigger).

Edit: it occurs to me that the quoted figures are mostly route lengths, not track lengths. Since double tracking is much more prevalent in Europe than the US, I suspect the actual length of track is higher in Europe.