Why is there no seat belt on the high-speed railway? What is this principle?

It is believed that many people will have such questions. There are seat belts on airplanes and cars. Why are there no seat belts on high-speed EMUs with speeds exceeding 300 kilometers per hour? Is it the special national condition of our country? Obviously not, because there are no seat belts on high-speed trains all over the world. Because high-speed rail is a new thing? This can be said in our country. Globally, Japan's Shinkansen line was opened in 1964, and it has been nearly 50 years since then. Obviously, it can not be regarded as a new thing.

Why don't high-speed trains have seat belts? There are three main reasons.

First, the stability of high-speed rail is strictly controlled, even to the degree of abnormality.

For the simplest example, when the high-speed rail starts, whether you're chatting with friends or looking down at your newspaper, it's hard to realize that the car has started unless the scenery and light outside the window changes rapidly.

High-speed rail is restricted by two tracks, and it also benefits from two tracks. On the one hand, China's high-speed railway has strict control over acceleration to ensure the stability of longitudinal motion, on the other hand, the high-speed train is firmly controlled by two rails, especially the ballastless track used by China's high-speed railway, which strictly controls the smoothness of the track and ensures that the train can not have large lateral and vertical earthquakes. Move. So under normal circumstances, you can walk freely on the train without having to fix yourself in your seat all the time.

Secondly, when a high-speed train accident occurs, the safety of passengers is far more harmful than the potential protection.

This is the most important and fundamental reason. The application of high-speed rail in Europe is relatively early, and there are many studies on the active and passive safety of high-speed rail. The European Commission on Railway Safety and Standards has found through a large number of surveys that passengers are more likely to be injured when they are tied to their seats in a major train accident, mainly because passengers who are tied to their seatbelts are more vulnerable to the damage caused by the collapse of the carriage structure because they cannot effectively avoid it.

The research results show that improving seat design is more effective in improving passenger safety in railway accidents than installing seat belts. At present, the seat widely used in high-speed railway in the world is a "collision-proof" safety seat, which can ensure that passengers in the rear row can collapse and deform in time when their head or knees collide forward against the back of the chair to prevent passengers from being stuck.

Under such premises, field tests conducted by the British Transport Research Laboratory show that neither the two-point seat belt on an aircraft nor the three-point seat belt on a car can reach an ideal or "safe" conclusion. Because when a two-point seat belt collides, the restraints on passengers are concentrated on the waist and buttocks, which constitutes the rotating axis. The head dives forward and collides with the seat force, enough to break the neck. There is no problem in choosing a three-point seat belt, but a new problem arises, that is, the collapsible "collision-proof" seat is not enough to support the force constraints brought by the three-point seat belt, that is to say, the two can not be used together.

By analyzing six typical longitudinal collisions, European railway authorities found that seat belts restrained passengers on their seats, which avoided the injury caused by passengers being thrown out, but the high-speed rail train was huge, which was a small possibility, and the seat belts also brought great danger to passengers. The analysis concluded that 11 people were saved because of the seat belt fixation, while 88 people lost their escape space in the fixed seat. According to the figures, the disadvantages of using seat belts on trains have outweighed the advantages, especially on high-speed trains.

Thirdly, for practical reasons, it is difficult to operate because people on high-speed rail are reluctant to wear seat belts.

One of the important reasons why people choose high-speed rail instead of airplanes is that it has spacious space and smooth operation. People are used to moving freely in the carriage and visiting friends in a series of carriages. So few people are willing to take the high-speed rail to fasten their seat belts.

Europe once sat on an experiment. In 1999, Finland carried out tests on a commercial high-speed railway. 271 sets of seat belts were installed in three carriages of the train. First, they surveyed cars without seat belts. Only 26% of passengers said they would use them if they had seat belts. Don't think the 26% ratio is too low. In practice, the results are even more stunning.

Only 1.1% of the passengers were actually willing to wear seat belts in the three-section vehicle. The reason given by the passengers was that it was uncomfortable and contrary to the traits of train travel. Eventually, the Finnish Railway stopped promoting seat belts on trains and concluded that people were reluctant to use seat belts on trains.