Since the first Japanese bullet train left Tokyo Station on October 1, 1964 — just nine days before the opening of the Tokyo Olympics — the Shinkansen has carried more than 10 billion passengers across 60 years of continuous high-speed operation, and has never had a single passenger fatality caused by derailment or collision in its entire history

Since the first Japanese bullet train left Tokyo Station on October 1, 1964 — just nine days before the opening of the Tokyo Olympics — the Shinkansen has carried more than 10 billion passengers across 60 years of continuous high-speed operation, and has never had a single passenger fatality caused by derailment or collision in its entire history

Every other country that has ever built a high-speed rail system has, sooner or later, killed people with it. The French TGV network, launched in 1981, has experienced several fatal accidents over its operating history, including a 2015 derailment near Strasbourg that killed 11 people during a test run. The German Intercity-Express network, launched in 1991, experienced the catastrophic Eschede derailment of June 1998, in which a high-speed trai…