{"id":16623,"date":"2016-01-18T11:41:15","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T16:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16623"},"modified":"2016-01-18T11:41:15","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T16:41:15","slug":"there-will-be-blood-oil-train-regulations-fail-to-address-known-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16623","title":{"rendered":"There Will Be Blood &#8211; Oil Train Regulations Fail To Address Known Risks"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2016\/01\/17\/there-will-be-blood-oil-train-regulations-fail-address-known-risks\" target=\"_blank\">There Will Be Blood &#8211; Oil Train Regulations Fail To Address Known Risks<\/a><\/h3>\n<article class=\"node-10232 node node-blog node-promoted view-mode-full clearfix\">\n<header>\n<p class=\"submitted desktop-only\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/lac%20megantic%20train%20.jpg?itok=CUU6gSgC\" alt=\"\" width=\"826\" height=\"620\" \/><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"horizontal-social-bar horizontal-social-bar-top clearfix\"><span class=\"dquo\">\u201c<\/span>Railroad rules have been written in blood.\u201d This line was included in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=J_5AAQAAMAAJ&amp;pg=PA15&amp;lpg=PA15&amp;dq=The+rules+of+the+railroad+are+written+in+blood&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=5o0AVerSJ-&amp;sig=R28XUaBzsm9m1e96AVCmJpiOEfQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwikmtLOhaLKAhWLLB4KHdAXBo0Q6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&amp;q=The%20rules%20of%20the%20railroad%20are%20written%20in%20blood&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">annual report of the Commissioner of Railroads<\/a>\u00a0for the state of Michigan \u2014 in 1901. The idea was that safety rules were only implemented when enough blood had been\u00a0spilled.<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p>One hundred and fifteen years later, in an opinion piece on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/05\/14\/opinions\/frailey-train-amtrak\/\" target=\"_blank\">rail safety for\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CNN<\/span><\/a>, rail expert Fred Failey essentially said the same thing, opening his piece with the statement, \u201cThe rules by which trains operate on American railroads were written in\u00a0blood.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to the rules regarding oil trains in America, many regulations that would improve safety have yet to be written. One reason is that, despite the multiple oil train crashes resulting in massive explosions in the past several years, there have been no fatalities in\u00a0America.<\/p>\n<p>Although 47 people did die in the Lac-Megantic oil train crash just north of the Maine border in Canada, that apparently isn\u2019t enough to change the tradition of the rail industry fighting any regulations that might improve public safety.<br \/>\n<strong>The Oil-By-Rail Industry Doesn\u2019t Want to Be\u00a0Regulated<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>An investigation by the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fra.dot.gov\/eLib\/Details\/L17122\" target=\"_blank\">Federal Railroad Administration<\/a>(<span class=\"caps\">FRA<\/span>) into the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/officials-broken-rail-caused-csx-train-derailment-west-virginia-n441781\" target=\"_blank\">Mount Carbon oil train derailment<\/a>\u00a0concluded that the cause of the accident was a broken rail. At that time, Sarah Feinberg, the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">FRA<\/span>\u2019s acting administrator, noted that, \u201cBroken rail is one of the leading causes of\u00a0accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So what are the regulations regarding rails becoming worn and increasing the risk of derailments? There are\u00a0none.<\/p>\n<p>As the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesunion.com\/news\/us\/article\/AP-Railroads-beat-back-new-safety-rules-after-6677644.php\" target=\"_blank\">Associated Press (<span class=\"caps\">AP<\/span>)<\/a>\u00a0reported in December, efforts to improve safety via rail wear regulations were stopped by the rail industry in 2013 in favor of \u201cvoluntary\u201d safety\u00a0measures.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There Will Be Blood &#8211; Oil Train Regulations Fail To Address Known Risks \u201cRailroad rules have been written in blood.\u201d This line was included in the\u00a0annual report of the Commissioner of Railroads\u00a0for the state of Michigan \u2014 in 1901. The idea was that safety rules were only implemented when enough blood had been\u00a0spilled. One hundred [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5317,11782,588,2466,3644,2838,690,1394],"class_list":["post-16623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-desmog-blog","tag-justin-mikulka","tag-oil","tag-oil-by-rail","tag-oil-transport","tag-rail-safety","tag-risk","tag-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16624,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16623\/revisions\/16624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}