Opinion | Train Accidents Can Happen Anywhere, Not Just in Spain

A facts-only brief, written by a local AI model from this article in The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2026. It may contain mistakes, and it is not the article: the full story is at wsj.com.

Allen Kaplan, writing from Benicia, California, published a letter responding to an opinion piece by Itxu Díaz that attributed recent Spanish train accidents to socialism. Kaplan argues that human error, rather than political systems, is the primary cause of such disasters. To support this view, he cites data from the Federal Railroad Administration indicating that 1,091 train accidents were recorded in the United States during 2026. Kaplan notes that the majority of these incidents occurred in Texas and questions whether capitalism should be blamed for these events.

Background

• Itxu Díaz’s original opinion piece, titled “Another Train Wreck in Socialist Spain,” was published on October 31.
• Díaz asserted that socialism is responsible for the high number of deaths and injuries resulting from recent train accidents in Spain.
• The Federal Railroad Administration is the U.S. agency responsible for recording and reporting train accident statistics.

Read the full article at wsj.com

More from Tuesday, November 3: