Train Crashes

Flightless Bird

David Farrier

Society & Culture, Documentary, Comedy

4.9 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2026

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this week’s Flightless Bird, David talks to a woman who’s been working at a law firm for over a decade that represents motorists who get hit by trains. How is this a full time job? Well, there are around 1300 train derailments in the US every year - 3.5 per day. Since 1975, those derailments have killed 467 people, 12,500 people maimed along the way. Then there are all the incidents of trains hitting cars, mostly at railway crossings. Last year, trains hit cars 1,870 times. 247 people died in the process - and 623 were injured. The year before that, even more people died being hit by America’s trains. David talks survival tips, and tries to get to the bottom of why this is happening. LINKS: Upcoming Flightless Bird live shows: 3/29 in Salt Lake City at the Depot https://bit.ly/flightlessSLC 4/2 in Austin at Emo's https://bit.ly/flightlessATX 4/4 in Dallas at the Texas Theatre https://bit.ly/flightlessDFW Join us for bonus episodes on Patreon: patreon.com/flightlessbird Contact us with your feedback: flightlessbirdchat@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello. Hi, Rosabel. How are you?
0:09.0	I'm good. How are you?
0:10.8	I'm good. Now, am I right in thinking you had a giant birthday celebration last night, correct?
0:17.4	It was not giant. It was very modestly sized.
0:22.7	So you're not too hungover today?
0:25.2	Look, size is nothing to do with hangovers.
0:29.5	Also, something I find I've always found interesting about you is you tend to, when your
0:34.7	birthday comes around, you don't have the one thing.
0:37.9	You tend to have a month of sort of ongoing bullshit.
0:41.2	Would you agree?
0:42.9	Okay.
0:43.6	Yeah.
0:43.9	I mean, you're correct for calling me out on that, but that's not what happened this time around, even though.
0:49.2	Well, when was your birthday?
0:50.6	How long ago?
0:51.7	On the 13th.
0:54.0	Yeah, and today is the 28th as we record this.
0:57.0	Yeah, but I was busy. I couldn't have a party.
1:02.7	Now, today's episode, Rosabel, is about trains again.
1:07.3	And I know we last talked about trains when we did the train hopping episode.
1:11.2	Today we are talking about the huge number of train versus car crashes in America, because
1:17.2	America has so many cars and so many train lines.
	...

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