There has been nothing except the JR West Japan train wreck on the news for the past five days. Any time the news is on, it is about the train wreck.
There was an interesting story the other day, written by a man who’d narrowly avoided the accident. He’d been on that train, but had been holding his pee for a few stops, and when the train overshot its mark at last station prior to its accident, he had to wait an extra minute for it to back up and open its doors. Even though it wasn't his stop, he couldn’t hold out much longer, so he got off at the current station after the train finished backing up to where it should be. As he left, he was going to leave his sports page on the overhead rack for anyone else to read, but another passenger was eyeing it, so he handed it to him. He avoided that train wreck, and was wondering what happened to the fellow passenger that he had only just handed off the reading material.
The media, as usual, is looking for a scapegoat. Rather than blame it on the young and inexperienced conductor, the current push is instead to blame JR itself for its stress-inducing policies for its employees, and questioning the generally incredibly safe record of JR. News shows are dragging out train timetables and showing how the time from one place to another has decreased, and how this means that trains are now speeding, going too fast... Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems like trains have been safe this whole time, and that this accident was the fault of the conductor and the veteran who was supposed to be watching over him, not covering his ass.
This was a horrible accident; apparently it’s the worst train accident in Japan’s history. The death-count is well over a hundred people now, and pretty much everybody else was injured. If I had lost someone on it, I’d likely be looking for someone or something on which I could vent my spleen. Dead conductors are not a satisfying receptacle for anger. However I recognize this as an emotional need, and not one that might not be rational. What bothers me is the media taking this emotional ball and running with it, rather than reporting the facts as they are discovered by the ongoing police investigation. Well, that and the fact that really obnoxious train otaku are being strutted around on every channel as experts, and its clear from their attitude that they’re just fanboys, and they love the attention too much.
There was an interesting story the other day, written by a man who’d narrowly avoided the accident. He’d been on that train, but had been holding his pee for a few stops, and when the train overshot its mark at last station prior to its accident, he had to wait an extra minute for it to back up and open its doors. Even though it wasn't his stop, he couldn’t hold out much longer, so he got off at the current station after the train finished backing up to where it should be. As he left, he was going to leave his sports page on the overhead rack for anyone else to read, but another passenger was eyeing it, so he handed it to him. He avoided that train wreck, and was wondering what happened to the fellow passenger that he had only just handed off the reading material.
The media, as usual, is looking for a scapegoat. Rather than blame it on the young and inexperienced conductor, the current push is instead to blame JR itself for its stress-inducing policies for its employees, and questioning the generally incredibly safe record of JR. News shows are dragging out train timetables and showing how the time from one place to another has decreased, and how this means that trains are now speeding, going too fast... Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems like trains have been safe this whole time, and that this accident was the fault of the conductor and the veteran who was supposed to be watching over him, not covering his ass.
This was a horrible accident; apparently it’s the worst train accident in Japan’s history. The death-count is well over a hundred people now, and pretty much everybody else was injured. If I had lost someone on it, I’d likely be looking for someone or something on which I could vent my spleen. Dead conductors are not a satisfying receptacle for anger. However I recognize this as an emotional need, and not one that might not be rational. What bothers me is the media taking this emotional ball and running with it, rather than reporting the facts as they are discovered by the ongoing police investigation. Well, that and the fact that really obnoxious train otaku are being strutted around on every channel as experts, and its clear from their attitude that they’re just fanboys, and they love the attention too much.
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