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!

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.