Morning journal and courier., 1882-09-23

THE SAFETY OF TRAVEL BY RAIL
 People find in their newspapers nearly ev. cry day accounts of railroad accidents, and these accidents are so numerous and so fataI that it is very easy to become impressed with the danger of travelling by rail. But it should be remembered that with all it's danger the railroad furnishes the safest mode of travel ing which human enterprise and ingenuity have yet succeeded in supplying.
 How safe it is to travel by rail is shown in clear and conclusive way by Professor George l.. Vose in an article in the current number of the NorM Anaerican Re0iesc Professor Vose calls attention to the fact that from the statistics of over forty years in France it appears that in proportion to the whole number carried the accidents to pas sengers by stage coaches in old times were, as compared to those by railroads, as about six ty to one. The official returns In France actually show that man is safer in railroad train than in his own house while in Eng land the figures show that hanging is thirty times more likely to happen to man than death by railroad. Charles Francis Adams in his 'Notes on Railroad Accidents,'' says that the annual average of deaths by acci- dent in the city of Boston alone exceeds that consequent on running all the railroads in the State of Massachusetts by eighty per cent and that, in the five years from 1874 to 1878, more persons were murdered in Boston than lost their lives on all the railroads of the State for ths nine years from 1871 to 1878, those years including both the Revere and the Wollaston disasters.
 In no State in this country are railroad sta tistics as comprehensively collected and care fully digested as in Massachusetts. During the past ten years the number of passengers carried over the railroads of that State in round numbers 400 100000, while the number of those who were killed and injured out of that great total was 5S1, of whom 250 had only thems elves to blame. It follows from this that for every passenger who was in any way injured 6S8, 900 were conveyed in safety, while, as death was caused in no more than 132 instances, three million passengers were transported unhurt for every passenger killed. The remarkable significance of these figures is increased by the consideration that nearly one half of the total number killed or injured were the victims of their own care- lessness, for whose mischance the railroads cannot properly be held responsible. This is feature which makes an important differ ence in the calculations. During the nine years ending 1879 only 51 persons were killed upon the road without any fault of their own, although in that time the total number of passengers carried was 3O3, 900, ,oO0. In other words, one person was killed out of each six millions carried, and at this rate Prof. Vose figures it out that anyone with average good luck would travel 60 miles an hour for ten hours day for 800 days year, and for 500 years, before, according to the law of proba- bilities, his turn came to be sacrificed.
 These are comforting figures. Those who are afraid of being killed by some accident can, it appears, add to their safety by living on railroad trains