People in the US will earn a lot more money during work life as chinese people. And of course, a humans life in china dont have the same value than in western countries.
Cant believe chinese government pay the family after just two days.

I don't mind the body falling at 9 seconds--so long as they were sure the person was dead first they shouldn't have tried to recover it before getting the train car out of that precarious position.

I do agree 2:56 is not justified but from that video at least I can't tell it's a body.

The titles mean nothing to me, I speak only a couple dozen words of Chinese and read even less than that.

500K RMB seemed high. I think another "face" gesture. Considering how much of a big mouth they had about HSR, at least they are putting their money where their mouth is.

As a reference Metrolink crash near LA with 25 dead and 135 injured maxed out liability at $200M and a small army of lawyers demand raising the cap to 400-600M. If we have to worry about rail service being driven out of business due to an accident it's here...

The total paid out by Chinese government for this incident, including death benefits, long term medical care and compensation for the injured, property
loss, emergency services... ~ 3 M USD.

For the 08 Chatsworth Metrolink collision the legal fees alone, both sides,
~ 200 M USD.

Trial lawyers didn't help Hu get his job.

Yes, and Wenzhou doesn't have cappers.

Chinese - Americans Ages 56 and 57.

I took the train today and it was very very very empty.

The ride was significantly slower speed than usual. It took 10 minutes longer to go the same distance.

It went really slow over the bridge.

It was pretty creepy.

I've noticed that trains that stop in ~7 places en route are often empty in BJ or SH, but if you go the distance, you can count on this not being the case for long. I felt a bit silly when I splurged for that upgrade last week (pre crash) because 2nd class was half full and 2 second class seats > 1 first class seat. However, at least in my car, every seat was filled at least once during the journey, so perhaps the additional coin was well spent.

In spite of the crash, my interest in flying back and forth between BJ and SH remains close to nil. While I certainly don't fancy meeting my maker in a train wreck, I feel compelled to weigh those odds (WAG = 1:100,000,000) against a 1 hour flight delay (~1:3), and choose the former. As an aside, the LA crash puts things into perspective, statistically speaking (train ridership in China is significantly greater than that in the USA).

I'm planning on starting a new thread about HSR when this current tragedy dissipates because I like it, to the extent that I'm willing to forego miles, and because I feel obligated to use it for the greater good (e.g. I want those random cities in the middle to blossom, in spite of my inability to profit from such).

In closing, I agree that the MOR got caught with its pants down and sincerely regret the loss of life. That having been said, it's impossible to deny the fact that this new infrastructure is a game changer. My money and my mouth are in the same place.

+1. Unless we see a pattern of new accidents I'll assume new trains are just as safe as flying or perhaps driving in LA.

We usually use HSR a couple of times a week. Since we don't know what time we actually finish, it is a case of after work we just head to the station and purchase the next available seat. Usually it is quite full and the wife and myself cannot even purchase tickets side by side but yesterday we could of had a romantic carriage just for ourselves if we wanted to move over to the next carriage.

I am also in total agreement that the HSR is a better way to travel if HSR travels there. I personally can't wait until the HSR goes past Xiamen and eventually connects to GZ.

Initial US news report:

Don't see any specific citation, however.

That's pretty technical information...failed to turn the green light into red

the official Xinhua news agency said:

BEIJING — Chinese railway officials have blamed "design flaws" in signalling equipment for a high-speed train crash in which at least 39 people were killed, the official Xinhua news agency said Thursday.

The system "failed to turn the green light into red" after being struck by lightning, Xinhua quoted An Lusheng, head of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, as saying during a meeting on the investigation into Saturday's accident.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...8e075b0b43.1b1

Apparently there are 800+ people in Wenzhou looking for relatives. Some are digging up the buried trains, others are trying to get information at the station.

GZ newspaper story today has a story of a guy who lost his wife and mother in the crash. He wanted to know more information about the crash and was told that if he kept trying he would lose the other 6 members of his family...crazy

I asked my Chinese friends at lunch today why they don't just use the ID numbers we give them to count the casualties...they all said the same thing...this is China, it's corrupt. The government doesn't want to pay those people 500,000rmb...

Basically, a lot more than 36 died

Hmm, I'm pretty sure that guy lost five members of his family and doesn't want to lose the sixth (his father-in-law) who is still in hospital.