Regarding the often recurring oil train “accidents”: These are mostly preventable, if only common sense were to prevail. The oil companies say they are striving to build stronger, safer cars to alleviate the situation, but this does not address the problem, keeping the cars on the tracks!

These cars, with their high center of gravity, are most likely going too fast around curves when “accidents” occur. As we all know, time is money, but for the safety of all concerned, lower speed limits should be enforced.

Also, there seem to be a great amount of carelessness involved here, such as operators leaving trains unattended at stops while engines are running, forgetting to set emergency brakes, resulting in 47 deaths in Ontario.

Now they want to leave just one person to operate a train! They should be adding more!

It’s time that safety rules be dictated to these companies by the proper authorities, not the other way around.

James Tobler

Lynnwood