I'm still hung up on what happens if there's an emergency on board? Yes, bathroom related would be one, but what about something like a heart attack? Are there any other forms of mass transit that don't allow for an emergency stop or at least the possibility of gaining reasonable assistance from another person on board? I guess the closest comparison would be an intercontinental plane, but planes have space to move around and bathrooms.
Well, with an average of 15 minutes until you arrive at the other end, where presumably EMTs are already waiting, I don' think you really need a close comparison. 15 minute response times are hardly unheard of and you can put yourself in a much more isolated situation just driving down the road in a car in some of the less dense parts of America.
I don't think this is a problem that actually needs a solution (though the public may very well demand one irrationally, much like the safety concerns the public is going to have with self-driving cars that are safer than human drivers...).
I agree, I don't see the damage.
In most real life situations anything that doesn't kill you immediately can wait 15-20 minutes, and when you get out the other end you can have great medical treatment.
Anything that requires you to be seen by some serious medical support faster than that will generally kill you regardless of the situation (ie. Left Main coronary embolism which kills 250,000 Americans a year)
Edit: complete misuse of iatrogenic. Too little sleep. Whoops
>I'm still hung up on what happens if there's an emergency on board? Yes, bathroom related would be one, but what about something like a heart attack? Are there any other forms of mass transit that don't allow for an emergency stop or at least the possibility of gaining reasonable assistance from another person on board?
Well, how it's different from a regular high speed train? (Besides reaching it's destination much much faster?) Where would a regular high speed train do an emegergency stop?
Other methods could be even worse, despite far more popular. A taxi in a traffic jam for one. You'd probably need more than 15 minutes to get to a hospital.
This is idea of "it's an emergency, we must stop the train" is often completely flawed. Lets say you trigger an emergency stop. Now what?
In all likelihood you are going to be further from a hospital or any qualified assistance than you would if you let the train continue at full speed. If you're really unlucky, you're in the middle of nowhere.
