Does anyone know anything about this (or have a source for it)? I remember either hearing from a law school professor or reading in a case that, before the introduction of the tort of “wrongful death,” railroad companies used to position the sleeping bunks in their cars so that passengers’ heads faced the front of the train. That way, rather than being injured in an accident (for which the railroad would have to pay higher damage awards), the passengers would more likely be instantly killed in the event of a crash. Supposedly, when the courts started recognizing wrongful death claims (which could result in even higher awards for a surviving spouse, for example), the railroads switched the direction of the bunks so that passengers would more likely only be injured rather than be killed.
In a standard Pullman car the bunks were lengthwise in the car. In the daytime they became the seats. It would have been difficult to provide privacy between bunks if they were arranged sideways. With the lengthwise layout, there was an aisle down the center of the car and curtains hanging from the overhead provided privacy.
In Pullman cars with individual compartments the aisle was down one side and as far as I know all the bunks were sideways to the direction of travel.
I’m filled with doubt about your “law school professor’s” story. My search revealed nothing remotely connected with such a reason for the arrangement.
That’s a pretty unbelievable claim. You need to ask your law school prof what the source of his info is. It sounds a lot like the many “conspiracy” theories floating around with no visible means of support.
How on earth could the positioning of a body before a crash ensure that the person would be killed and not just injured? A crash might happen at any speed and any angle.
In September I took Amtrak to Florida and got one of the sleeper berths. Controls for air, TV, etc were on both sides of the booth, but the TV was at the foot of the bed.
this was heading south. Didn’t take the return trip by train so I can’t speak for the northbound trains.
I don’t think this is true. I can’t find a cite right now, ISTR it was quite common to use a loop or Y to rotate passenger cars which had a preferred orientation. Observation cars needed the observation deck facing back. In case of sleeper cars with on one side, the preferred direction was with the bedrooms facing outside when two trains passed.
The idea of the tort of wrongful death dates from well before railroad trains were invented.
Waay back in Merrye Olde Englande it was true that the tort died with the victim. The injured could sue, but the dead could not; neither could their survivors. So if a rich guy ran over somebody with his horse & carriage, the smart thing to do was to back over his head a couple times to make sure he was good and dead.
But as civilzation became, well, more civilized, this was realized to be a bad idea for society. Surviving family members are also injured by the death and therefore have some right of recovery of damages if fault can be proved.
The original English case that established the idea that survivors had an actionable interest in the death of a family member is a law school standard that dates from the late 1700s. Wife can’t dredge up the name of the case right now, but perhaps somebody recently graduated from law school will recall the name.
I read a detective story once (in a book collection of stories all about the same detective) in which the key clue was one party’s claim that he had bumped his head when the train (and the Pullman car in which he was sleeping) came to an abrupt halt.
But the brilliant detective was able to point out his lie by noting that all Pullman berths were arranged such that the passenger’s feet faced forward.
This was the key to the story. It was apparently such an obvious thing that the reader was supposed to have figured it out.
On looking around Google, it looks like this was the book, though it was probably a decade ago that I read it. I must admit I didn’t know what a Pullman carriage was at the time, though perhaps I can be excused since it seems just abouteveryrailcar in my country was built by Bombardier.
In 1987, I took a train in China from Xi’an to Chengdu. The four bunks were aligned perpendicular to the rails; our heads faced the side window of the railroad car.
There were larger “cattle cars” (the ultra-cheap sleeper cars) in the back of the train where others in the group stayed, and those bunks were stacked three or four tall; those, too, were perpendicular to the direction of the rails.
It’s been years (decades!) since I rode on a passenger train, but in those days the bunks were pretty much bi-directional. That is, there was nothing to indicate either the engine-end or the caboose-end of the bunk as being the head, except where the pillow was placed. And that seemed to be at the whim of the attendent who made up the beds. In our car, I noticed that the pillow was always at the right-hand side as you faced into the bunk, so across the aisle the heads were on the opposite end of the bunks.
So I’d have agree that this OP sounds unlikely to me. Ask your professor for a cite! (Provided he’s not the kind that will down-grade you for challenging him on this. There are some like that in colleges!)
This is used to turn engines around not entire trains usually. THough there are some train lines that have loops that allow entire trains to loop such as the 1-9 subway in NYC. I don’t think a Y would be useful for an entire train.
Ah, Two-Minute Mysteries. This is the same series with the 'obvious facts ’ that a redheaded victim would never wear the clothes on the bed - they’d clash with her hair color! Or that an English professor could not possibly make a mistake in usage.
From the same guy who brought you Encyclopedia Brown (the criminal was easy to catch - his name was Bugs Meany, for Pete’s sake.)