A train wreck or train crash is a type of disaster involving one or more trains. Train wrecks often occur as a result of miscommunication, as when a moving train meets another train on the same track; or an accident, such as when a train wheel jumps off a track in a derailment; or when a boiler explosion occurs. Train wrecks have often been widely covered in popular media and in folklore.
Because of the potential for multiple deaths and extensive property damage and economic loss, the law treats the intentional wrecking of a train as extremely serious, some jurisdictions providing for life imprisonment even where the wreck does not result in death, and the death penalty where it does.
Famous quotes containing the words train and/or wreck:
“Every philosophy is tinged with the colouring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.”
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
“A pseudo-event ... comes about because someone has planned it, planted, or incited it. Typically, it is not a train wreck or an earthquake, but an interview.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)