A 'Death Train' Is Haunting South Florida

[douglas9]

The Brightline is a beautiful train. Ultra-quiet and decorated with streaks of highlighter yellow, it carries passengers between Miami and Orlando, sometimes moving as fast as 125 miles per hour. It restores glamour to the humble railroad: During your ride, if you wish, you can order a half bottle of Veuve Clicquot for $59; the on-board bathrooms are large and clean enough to take a decent mirror selfie in. Condé Nast Traveler has called it “super chic.”

Privately owned and operated and transporting about 250,000 passengers a month, the Brightline is only the second high-speed train in the United States and the first outside the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak operates the Acela. Its newness and sleekness make it a novelty in a country where trains are mostly old and ugly. Its existence shows that America can still build great things and that private industry can build them quickly and with style. If a beautiful high-speed train can work in Florida—whose former governor famously rejected more than $2 billion in federal funding for such a train—maybe it can work anywhere. But right now, something is very wrong.

What the Brightline is best known for is not that it reflects the gleam of the future but the fact that it keeps hitting people. According to Federal Railroad Administration data, the Brightline has been involved in at least 185 fatalities, 148 of which were believed not to be suicides, since it began operating, in December 2017. Last year, the train hit and killed 41 people—none of whom, as best as authorities could determine, was attempting to harm themselves. By comparison, the Long Island Rail Road, the busiest commuter line in the country, hit and killed six people last year while running 947 trains a day. Brightline was running 32.


https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/brightline-train-florida/684624/

[NoMoreRepugs]

1. Having moved to Florida in 1998 I can attest to the INCREDIBLE #

of nitwits that live here. Lived in Orlando, Ft Lauderdale and Jacksonville. They are EVERYWHERE.

[Deep State Witch]

2. Florida Man Says

"Here, hold mah beer!"

I have the major freight line between Baltimore and DC bordering my backyard. While the tracks are below ground level where we are, they are closer to ground level a few streets down in our subdivision. Kids are constantly crossing back and forth - even though the commuter train between the two cities goes through there at high speed. We've had a couple of people killed on the tracks.

[hlthe2b]

4. Growing up, I lived for a time in a house with larged treed backyard that dropped down a woody

and brushy ravine to traintracks. At the tender age of 7, I remember joining my sister and my Dad fighting a serious brushfire ignited by the train (old style) traveling by sparking as it went. I like trains and wish we had a modern network, but even the old-timey trains could be hauling dangerous gaseous cargo or other goods in those lines of freight cars. And when they are that loaded, they couldn't stop if they wanted. Even as a very young child, I could see how easy it would be to get trapped on the tracks and would beg my Mom not to try to move across right before the gate came down at an intersection (or like others I'd seen, drive around). From dangerous cargo, unintentional fires igniting, deadly track intersections, or just foolish people taking risks, we need regulation and oversight. With the new high-speed trains, this only dramatically increases. Unfortunately, not heeded by Trumpists...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. I'm inclined to agree that the problem

is the people who get on the tracks, rather than the train itself.

[unc70]

5. US trains hit and kill people

Comparing rail deaths in Florida (or NC, ...) with those on the LIRR or elsewhere on the Northeast Corridor are misleading. In the dense urban areas of the Northeast, most tracks are relatively difficult to access, often fenced off, and less likely at grade level.

In most of the US, the situations are quite different. Trains, motor vehicles, and pedestrians are routinely in the same spaces. Many small towns have their main streets immediately adjacent to the tracks.

Stupid behavior has severe consequences. For example, walking along the tracks while wearing headphones with loud music, maybe drunk. Many street crossings are unguarded -- no red nights, no crossing barriers. These tracks include the main lines north-south for Amtrak and freight.

[Jose Garcia]

6. All of the crossings have gates which close when the train is approaching

Unfortunately, we have a significant number of people who either stop on the track while stuck in traffic or go around the closed gates. And there have been a significant number of suicides.