A deadly high-speed rail accident in Spain on Wednesday has raised questions about whether where someone sits on a train affects their chances of surviving such a crash.
A very rough consensus has emerged: it is best to sit not up front, not at the very back, but somewhere in the middle of a train, facing backward. But rail safety experts say that there are too many variables in train crashes to say for certain.
The accident in Spain was a rear-end impact. At least 68 people were killed when one train slammed into another one that was stopped on the tracks. Experts say seat choice can shift a passenger’s odds at the margins, but the type of crash matters far more than where anyone happens to be sitting.
“Tell me what kind of crash you’re going to have, and I’ll tell you where the best place to be is,” said John Goglia, an independent safety consultant and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board.
There is no universally safe seat, he said.
Robert Paaswell, a distinguished emeritus professor of civil engineering at the City College of New York, said serious train crashes are rare, and their causes and circumstances can vary widely. One might be a rear-end collision, another a derailment caused by a track defect.
“Here, a train just plowed into the back of a train, so the safest place to have sit would have been in the front of the train” that was struck, Mr. Paaswell said. “But you didn’t know that was going to happen.”
That has not stopped experts from trying to figure out where it is safest to sit. The traditional answer has been the middle of the train because the lead car absorbs the force of a head-on collision and the rear car takes the brunt of a rear-end one.
Jim Mathews, chief executive and president of the Rail Passengers Association, an advocacy group that seeks to improve American passenger rail service, said that as a rule of thumb he prefers to sit in the middle of a train. But that offers no guarantee.
“I put a giant asterisk on it that, depending on the nature of the wreck and the severity of it, any safety device can be defeated,” Mr. Mathews said.
In those middle cars, some experts have said, the best bet is an aisle seat facing backward. In a sudden stop, a rear-facing passenger’s body is thrust into the seat instead of forward, reducing whiplash and the risk of being hit by flying objects. An aisle seat keeps passengers away from shattering windows.
The crash on Wednesday showed how that logic can flip. The front carriage of the moving train — run by Spain’s national operator, Renfe — was destroyed. The two cars at the back of the stopped train, which was run by the private company Iryo, overturned.
For passengers on the Iryo train, Mr. Gogila said, the safest place would have been up front. The farther you sit from the point of impact, the more cars there are between you and the oncoming train to absorb its energy.
Even choosing the “right seat” guarantees little. Loose luggage can become projectiles, and passengers standing in aisles, vestibules or restrooms are far more exposed. In a crash this violent, experts said, the seats themselves may give way.
“If you’re standing up, you’re probably dead,” Mr. Gogila said. “If you’re seated, you might still be dead because there’s no seatbelts.”
Allan Zarembski, director of the railroad engineering and safety program at the University of Delaware, said he has not seen a study that definitively identifies the safest seat. The usual advice is to avoid the ends of the train and sit in the middle. But when a derailment is caused by a broken rail or wheel, “it really can be any car in the train” that derails, he said.
Passengers are most likely to be injured when a car derails and then overturns, he said.
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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