Tennessee Sports Journalist Dies in Tragic Accident

[bamamc1]

Tragic story about the death of a sports journalist. Please join me in prayer for his family. https://www.wbir.com/article/news/l...t-43/51-a3f0541d-b75e-4a4b-9006-27eda16f7941#

 

[CB4]

So sad. Wes was a really good guy. Prayers for his family.

 

[GrayTide]

Tragic news, as CB4 said, "he was a really good guy". RIP Wes.

 

[Con]

Man I hate to hear this. I feel for his family. He was far too young.

 

[mdb-tpet]

Another great person taken by our terrible transportation system. I lost a friend (32 years old) last year due to a driver crossing the line and hitting them head on.

We can do better.

As a contrast, the Shinkansen train system in Japan has had 0 passenger fatalities in 61 years with over 2 billion passengers.

We must do better.

 

[Isaiah 63:1]

Another great person taken by our terrible transportation system. I lost a friend (32 years old) last year due to a driver crossing the line and hitting them head on.

We can do better.

As a contrast, the Shinkansen train system in Japan has had 0 passenger fatalities in 61 years with over 2 billion passengers.

We must do better.

Sorry to hear about your friend. That's tough. I lost friends at that age and younger; you never forget them.

Not to derail the thread (but here I go anyway):

• Shinkansen is intercity rail. I'm guessing the Wes Rucker accident (for him at least) was not an intercity trip. Leaving that aside...
• I take trains in Europe whenever I'm there.
  • They work logistically there because (like Japan) they can meet the two necessary conditions for workable rail: population density and relative (by US standards) proximity.
  • They don't work anywhere financially at the system level; the fares are always subsidized by the State, even in the UK with its largely privatized operators. Routes that do make money (after covering all fully-allocated costs), such as Tokyo-Osaka, are always more than offset by the ones that don't.
• The longest route on Honshu (Japan's main island) is 419 miles; about the width of Tennessee.
• To match Honshu's population density, Tennessee would need a population of 48 million versus the current 7.3 million. For the US contiguous 48, that number is 3.7 billion versus the current 335 million.
• If the US had Shinkansen-type intercity rail, anything longer than Manhattan to Chicago loop would be appreciably faster (even including ground transit time and airport processing time) by air.
• The Shinkansen fare per mile is similar to US domestic airfare per mile, so even if the times were comparable, the cost would not likely be better.

 

[alabama mike1]

So sorry to hear this tragic news.

 

[Crimson1967]

His wife is pregnant in her third trimester. That’s horrible.

 

[dtgreg]

If you have kids, you MUST have life insurance. Don't wait a week or a month for the new job's to kick in. Buy a policy the minute you think yours will expire. You can't not do this.

 

[mdb-tpet]

Sorry to hear about your friend. That's tough. I lost friends at that age and younger; you never forget them.

Not to derail the thread (but here I go anyway):

• Shinkansen is intercity rail. I'm guessing the Wes Rucker accident (for him at least) was not an intercity trip. Leaving that aside...
• I take trains in Europe whenever I'm there.
  • They work logistically there because (like Japan) they can meet the two necessary conditions for workable rail: population density and relative (by US standards) proximity.
  • They don't work anywhere financially at the system level; the fares are always subsidized by the State, even in the UK with its largely privatized operators. Routes that do make money (after covering all fully-allocated costs), such as Tokyo-Osaka, are always more than offset by the ones that don't.
• The longest route on Honshu (Japan's main island) is 419 miles; about the width of Tennessee.
• To match Honshu's population density, Tennessee would need a population of 48 million versus the current 7.3 million. For the US contiguous 48, that number is 3.7 billion versus the current 335 million.
• If the US had Shinkansen-type intercity rail, anything longer than Manhattan to Chicago loop would be appreciably faster (even including ground transit time and airport processing time) by air.
• The Shinkansen fare per mile is similar to US domestic airfare per mile, so even if the times were comparable, the cost would not likely be better.

Nice post. I’m just using the Shinkansen as an example of long distance ground transportation done thoughtfully with safety as a key feature, not a secondary feature to individualism like our transportation system. I’ve lost several friends to car crashes and I’ve been hit several times on the roads. We are smart enough to do much better, we just don’t want to do better yet. We subsidize the heck out of our roads, yet we expect rail to be cost neutral and fund it as minimally as possible. Yeah, I’m digressing off of the original topic, but I just want to call out our lack of progress in making a safe transportation system (other than commercial airplanes in the US).

 

[Isaiah 63:1]

Nice post. I’m just using the Shinkansen as an example of long distance ground transportation done thoughtfully with safety as a key feature, not a secondary feature to individualism like our transportation system. I’ve lost several friends to car crashes and I’ve been hit several times on the roads. We are smart enough to do much better, we just don’t want to do better yet. We subsidize the heck out of our roads, yet we expect rail to be cost neutral and fund it as minimally as possible. Yeah, I’m digressing off of the original topic, but I just want to call out our lack of progress in making a safe transportation system (other than commercial airplanes in the US).

Understood. What do you think would work in the US? If we need to move this to NS we can, but as I don't think either of us is being political here I'm hoping for a few more posts' leeway from the mods.

And I think you're right to mention individualism. Road systems prioritize the convenience of the individual (go where and when I want) and put the state at their service to provide them. Trains prioritize communal schedules. That preference plus relative lack of population density explain how/why we've decided as we have...