That was one of the big advantages of the steel coach, it would not easily telescope. In fact the normal result of a collision with steel cars was to "accordian" that is they end up in a zig-zag arrangement.
I must respectfully submit that it is not just the use of steel as the construction material that gives cars this property of not telescoping. It is also the integral or monocoque design. There are ample cases of steel coaches built on separate floor frame that have been ripped off the floor frame in collisions causing mayhem inside the car.
As to the ICE trains, look up details on the Eschede accident. Find pictures of the aftermath and you will see that several of the cars literally unzipped along their seams. And for some, this did not appear to be the result of a telescoping type of action, as they ended up completely off the track spread out like car kits with identifiable roof, sides, and floors more or less parallel to each other. Over 100 people died in this. Compare this to the Chase MD accident where a train of Amfleet cars hit three stopped diesels at over 100 mph and only 13 people died.
Of course the fact that the first car was unoccupied and the second car was sparsely occupied did help keep the casualty rates down in case of the Chase crash. So the comparison is a bit apples and oranges. But hey if it helps make ones argument. Why not? The first car was actually pretty much demolished. Typically even a monocoque design will not help much if a huge blow is struck from the side.
I am also not sure how even Amfleets will fare if they manage to bashed into an immovable bridge pylon at 125+mph. The diesel locomotives that were involved in the Chase accident were not as immovable an obstruction as the bridge pylon in Eschede.
But I hasten to add that there were also manufacturing issues in the ICE 1 sets that caused them to open up at seams, which was not by design but was possibly a known problem that had been swept under the rug, lime things sometimes are.
I would avoid riding one of these train sets in Germany and certainly would not if at all avoidable ride one in the US if they ever did get here.
Interesting, and yet you have no problem riding the Shinkansen and even the Taiwan HST? Or are you saying that you would specifically avoid riding the ICE 1 sets because of their manufacturing issues? Would you ride a Shinkansen set if it were to operate in the US? Not questioning your decision. Just trying to scope your statement as to what are the root principles involved.
While it could be debated that our crashworthiness standards go too far, I don't those in Germany, if there are any, go near far enough. Vehicle integrity in a collision is a primary, if not the primary requirement. I tend to suspect that the German philosophy is that there will not be collisions.
At least in my view the US crashworthiness standards focus on some issues to the exclusion of others in a collision and fail to address a few issues that are more important when it comes to actually saving lives in collisions. So I would not say that it goes too far or not. It is just that it does not take a more holistic view of overall survivability in high speed collisions.
What is important is the integrity of the passenger carrying component of the vehicle must preserve the lives of the passengers in it, and if necessary be able to sacrifice the overall vehicle in order to make it so. If it takes deformation of the stuff outside of the passenger compartment to absorb energy then so be it. That is the philosophy followed in the design of crumple zones in cars and rail cars alike. A design the merely preserves integrity of the entire vehicle without providing for energy absorption in a collision is a poor design. As I have mentioned elsewhere FRA has already started moving in that direction in its Tier II standards, though they have not quite been able tog et over their idea of increasing buff strength requirements nonetheless.
The Eschede disaster was such a series of things done wrong coming together, it is used as a teaching tool explaining the concept of the "Cascade of Events."
Indeed. One over-riding lesson from Eschede has got to be "Keep it Simple" and reduce the number of components and hence independent points of potential failure. Afterall the root cause of Eschede was the failure in an overly complex design of wheels that involved multiple components (way more than really necessary) that could fail independently thus making the net probability of failure unacceptably high, but an issue that was successfully swept under the proverbial carpet since afterall beating the French was more important, or some such.
