In the wake of Tuesday night's Amtrak crash, which left seven people dead, House Republicans proposed cutting Amtrak funding. But as Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday, "starving rail of funding will not enable safer train travel" — and America's train system is still much, much safer than traveling by car.
A 2013 study from Northwestern University published in the journal Research in Transportation Economics found only seven passengers on mainline commercial trains in the U.S. die each year, on average, and the fatality rate of long-haul train service is 0.43 per billion passenger miles.
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