78 dead as a high-speed train leaps off the tracks.

In Spain.

Video footage showed carriages crumpled and lying on their side. Almost all those who perished were found dead on the scene, in an indication of the force of the derailment. A local official likened the scene to Dante’s "Inferno."

I'm blogging this because it's not an atypical incident and because too many people in America have unrealistic, idealized notions of the goodness of trains and their capacity to whisk everyone around everywhere at high speed.