Beijing subway crash leaves 102 with broken bones

alphacyberranger@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 144 points –
Beijing subway crash leaves 102 with broken bones
bbc.com
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How is this unbelievable? It's not uncommon for rail accidents to have low fatalities.

What if it was 1000 people with broken bones and zero deaths? Would you find that unbelievable? How about a million?

The point is that there is some number of people with broken bones in a single incident that would make a reasonable person believe that somebody must have died. Maybe for you, it's a billion people or something ridiculous. For me, it's under 100.

How many people were on the train though? 100 out of 100 with broken bones? Nah, someone likely died. 100 out of 10,000? That's a little more believable.

It doesn't matter how many people were on the train. It matters how many people had broken bones. What if, instead of "broken bones", it said "broken necks"? If you heard that an incident caused 100 broken necks, but there were zero deaths, would you find it hard to believe?

A broken bone is a serious injury typically caused by a strong impact. The fact that there were so many serious injuries suggests that there would be more deaths.

A neck and a finger are vastly different. If it was 100 broken fingers out of 10,000 passengers, I stand by it being believable no one died. If it was 100 broken necks out of 100 passengers and no deaths, then something's fishy.

Had they said 100 broken fingers, I would expect fewer deaths, yes. But that's just for comparison, and they didn't say broken fingers. My point with saying broken necks was that it's obvious that it doesn't matter how many other people were on the train. Common sense can be used, but only if we have reasonable expectations.

This is two trains colliding at a fast enough speed to break bones in 100 people. How does that happen? In the video we don't see anything like the results of a collision of that magnitude. I doubt anybody had a single broken bone of any sort from the train wreck in that video.

100 people with broken bones, you're talking about impacts where people are thrown over. People's heads are smashing into things. You're talking concussions. You're talking crushing injuries and rib fractures. You're talking skull fractures and whiplash. People of all ages could have been in the wreck. With 100 people with broken bones, this was a violent impact.