Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide, which some readers may find distressing.
There's tragedy on the tracks, as one train conductor has revealed how landing his dream job quickly turned into a nightmare, with an alarming number of deaths linked to Florida's 'Death Train'.
The idea of a reliable and regular high-speed passenger train connecting Miami to Florida sounds like a blessing for commuters and tourists alike, but since the inter-city higher-speed rail ran its first service in January 2018, Brightline has earned itself an unfortunate legacy.
As reported by The Atlantic, the 'super chic' Brightline service has a problem as it ferries some 250,000 passengers a month. Alarming statistics from the Federal Railroad Administration claim there have been at least 185 fatalities since Brightline started running, with 148 of them believed not to be suicides. In 2024, there were said to be 41 deaths, with authorities not attributing any of them to suicide.
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Compare this to the Long Island Rail Road, as the busiest commuter line in the USA, that hit and killed six people while running 947 trains a day in the same period. By comparison, Brightline was running just 32 trains a day.
In January 2023, the National Transportation Safety Board said Brightlineโs accident rate per million miles operated was 43.8 from 2018 to 2021. The Metra commuter train in Chicago came in second, with 18.4 per million miles. The Miami Herald and a Florida NPR station conducted their own investigation, alleging that someone is killed by the Brightline on average of once every 13 days.
The grim 'Death Train' moniker comes alongside macabre jokes about how the train needs to be 'fed' to keep hurricanes away. The outlet says Brightline engineers and conductors sometimes joke about getting a 'golden ticket' of three days paid leave, then rolling into the weekend.
Speaking to the Miami Herald, conductor Darren Brown explained how his dream job being a conductor on the Brightline service was anything but. Saying the train was travelling at 127.14 kilometers per hour when 67-year-old Dennis Conrad threw himself in front of the train had no real chance of survival. This was the day after Thanksgiving 2018, but by Christmas, Brown had seen two more fatalities.
The outlet maintains that Brightline struggles with deaths on crossings where there are apparently no gates, bells, and only a few signs. Whether walking to work, church, or back from the bar, people cutting the tracks or not paying attention are a tragic consequence of collisions alongside those hoping to take their own life.
Even though Brown said he was excited to be a โbadass bullet train conductor," he soon learned this wouldn't be the case. As the son of a US Marine, Brown tallied the number of deaths he'd witnessed and added: "If I stay here. What will my body count be?"
As a friend of Brown's, Vernon Mahan told the sitw about his own experience operating the Brighline as he confessed: "You donโt forget them. They bury into the depths of your brain, they do."
Brown no longer wears his uniform out after work, tired of hearing, "Oh, yeah, the murder train? The death train?โ
With the Miami Herald saying the number of deaths was now standing at 191, Brown hopes that we can move past whose 'fault' it is, concluding: "Itโs not just about fences and bells and whistles. The picture is bigger than that.
โSomeone whoโs gonna walk in front of the train is gonna walk in front of the train. How do you care for everyone else?โ
If you or someone you know is struggling or in a mental health crisis, help is available through Mental Health America. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. You can also reach the Crisis Text Line by texting MHA to 741741.