I don't know the specific incident and I'll leave turning it into party-political spat to Americans, but "faster brakes?
I wonder what that meant? The one thing train brakes should not do is lock solid while the wheels are revolving because that can make the whole lot simply slide, damaging the rails and wheels. How rapidly the brakes are applied will depend on whether the brake application rate is under the driver's control (rather as it is on your car) or some sort of automatic system; but an emergency brake application should still stop the train as safely and as efficiently as well as rapidly as possible. Note that a train's stopping distance is a lot longer than a road vehicle's at the same speed.
An average of 260 reported accidents a year seems high by any modern industrial standards; but how many were attributable to Norfolk Southern itself, how many to other railway companies or staff including Amtrak, and how many, especially the obstructions, to external factors? For example I've seen in photographs, and been told, that many US level crossings don't have barriers, so are collisions with road vehicles on crossings common?
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Human error is implicated in probably most accidents of any sort, not only on the railways. Often it is not a single error by one person - systems can be designed to minimise that risk greatly (tell DeutscheBahn only very gently...) - but either a chain of small mistakes with accumulating results, or a few major flaws by different organisations coalescing.
As with the Tay Bridge Disaster in the 19C: inherently weak design, atrociously poor work by the components manufacturers and bridge erectors, plus negligence by the Board of Trade that was supposed to oversee the whole project. Sadly it seems only the designer who is blamed. Maybe too with the Fukushima Power Station disaster - someone decided to put its emergency generators right next to the sea, but surely others should have spotted the flaw before the plans were approved?
There is also a very strange form of human error that might have been implicated in two of Britain's worst rail disasters, by the drivers; but since they were killed outright we'll never know. This seems a sort of lapse of concentration that is not momentary but might freeze the mind for too long, like a rabbit in a headlamp beam. I do not know but would rather hope that research psychologists have examined this aspect with a view to assessing what if anything might be done to avoid it.
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By contrast, the UK railways' modern safety record is very good. It has to be with very busy passenger trains running routinely at over 100mph on a crowded network; but its passenger services are frequently criticised for poor performance. Unfortunately it's usually the train operating company that is blamed even if innocent, but figures are not widely published - including that one of the most numerous and tragic causes of delays is suicides. So the public has a very distorted view of what is happening, and by human nature people rarely think beyond their immediate woes or "worst" experiences.
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The last time I travelled by rail the train shuddered to a halt from maybe 90mph, with some horrible noises from below the floor for the last few yards. Some useless louts, probably from an adjacent housing-estate, had dragged an old armchair up the embankment and put it on the line, but luckily we were on a long straight stretch in daylight so the driver saw it in time. We still hit it, at low speed, hence the grinding noises, but the driver and guard managed to extricate it from below the coach. It cost a half-hour delay arriving in Bristol as we now had to wait for other services that would have followed us. In this case there were no damage or injuries but I hate to think what might have happened if this had been on a dark, foggy night.
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Don't tell DeutscheBahn?
Some years ago now, I forget when (in the early 2000s I think), an official referred to in the News as a "Train Despatcher" gave the right-away to a passenger train (Train A) leaving a double-track station and entering a long single track section. Some distance away, it crashed head-on into Train B already approaching from the other direction. I forget the casualty figures, or if anyone died, but it was a serious collision,
What went wrong?
B was already occupying the single track, unknown to A' driver A. A should have waited until B's arrival on the station's other platform. Then A's road could have been verified clear and its points and signals set correctly. A was though, manually waved away from an otherwise empty station, its driver naturally assuming a clear road ahead.
What did the Authorities do?
They prosecuted the poor Train Despatcher..... Easy target, satisfies the General Public, avoids Awkward Questions. I don't know if this was eventually resolved. The poor man may genuinely have made one, simple mistake or he may have been negligent, I do not know, BUT.... Could it happen again?
Think about it. I have already hinted at it.
