alt Hacker NewsIt's become a real risk to take a train in Spain. Two severe accidents in the same year on what's typically considered the safest transport method.
I can't remember the last time I read good news related to my country.
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There were 222 pedestrian urban-area deaths in Spain in 2025.
There is a risk of just being outside. Usually due to cars.
Doing anything is a risk. The salient thing is relative risk. Even with record levels of train accidents it’s still the safest way to travel.
The bodycount sits around 100 this year for trains and 1775 last year for cars.
Even correcting for distance travelled it’s still way more safe.
its still probably the safest form of transport.
> I can't remember the last time I read good news related to my country.
I hear comments like this from people from many countries.
As far as I can tell, the idea that rail is the safest form of transit is just false. At least looking at recent Europe-wide data, and even if you make the _very_ favorable decision to include only occupant fatalities, modern commercial aviation has meaningfully lower fatalities per passenger-km than modern rail.
Ah but the good news thing is actually nothing to do with Spain and everything to do with news in this era. It’s a problem everywhere that news is like 95% bad, and not because the world is getting any worse either.
As someone from the US I have repeatedly heard that Spain's economy is doing reasonably well. And I just looked it up, unemployment is approximately the lowest it has been in two decades. Considering the post 2009 era of economic turmoil that Spain went through, that economic momentum seems like a real positive.
In June Goldman Sachs put out an article noting how well Spain's economy is doing, which included this employment comparison (showing Spain's outperformance versus its peers):
Spain's unemployment rate has converged with Finland's, a remarkable improvement:
The jobs being created are tending more toward high value, high productivity jobs that pay better than average. That's no doubt helping diversify Spain's economy further away from tourism, which should provide greater long-term economic strength and stability. Overall it might be a really good decade coming up for the people of Spain.
Spain actually boasts about their train system quite a lot. That's why more attention on related news