On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said it should be "common sense" that "large freight trains, some of which can be over three miles long, should have at least two crew members on board."

The length of the train has absolutely nothing to do with it, but Buttigieg is gesturing toward the idea that a second person on board could bring the train to a halt if the driver is somehow incapacitated. And, indeed, it was longstanding railroading practice to have multiple people in the cab of freight trains for exactly this reason.

These days, however, it is automation and not a backup engineer that is responsible for a dramatic decline in railway accidents and injuries. Thanks to positive train control (PTC)—essentially a computer-based override system that monitors speed and track signals to avert collisions, and which railroads have been mandated by Congress to use since 2008—rail accidents have fallen by 30 percent while employee injuries are down 40 percent since 2000, according to data from the Association of American Railroads (AAR), an industry group.

Additionally, Buttigieg's claim about "common sense" comports with neither the specifics of the East Palestine accident nor recent governmental reviews of the two-person crew mandate.