Little had changed after last year’s fiery RR crash in East Palestine.

The changes railroads announced after last year’s fiery crash in East Palestine, haven’t yet made a major difference, statistics show, and reforms have stalled in Congress. A few key measures in the latest Federal Railroad Administration statistics, including the total number of train accidents, worsened over the first 11 months of last year compared to the same period in previous years. Meanwhile there were some improvements with other numbers, like total derailments. The overall picture is that rail safety hasn’t significantly improved in recent years and as the Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine last Feb. 3 and others demonstrate, just one derailment can be disastrous when hazardous chemicals are involved. The small town near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border is still struggling to recover a year later. The railroad industry defends its record as the safest way to transport hazardous materials over land, something the head of the National Transportation Safety Board agreed with in recent testimony.