Absolutely! All these were covered in the book I mentioned. Other critical safety improvements were many; but most significantly included anti-climbers, anti-telescoping devices, and of course, the energy absorbing vestibule or mechanical space at each end of a very strong passenger compartment.

The automatic air brake and Janney couplers you mentioned dramatically reduced crew injuries, which were so common that they significantly shortened the expected lifespan of the average trainman. In the meantime, the failsafe track circuit greatly reduced the colision rate.

The greatest cause of death when colisions occured was penetration of passenger carrying spaces, usually by one car telesoping into another, or sometimes by one car riding up over and enveloping the next. Of course, any disintergration of the passenger space was deadly.

Existing federal standards are designed to prevent these from happening, even if a colision does occur at very high speed. While not 100% perfect in preventing such threats to life (what is), these standards do pretty well - as evidenced by the relatively low death and injury rate per accident enjoyed by todays American rail passenger.

Unfortunately, lightrail and rapid transit vehicles are not covered by the same federal laws and are therefore rarely built to the same standard, thus transit accidents are often more gruesome. Federal law does at least prohibit such weak vehicles from sharing track with the heavier, stronger vehicles used on the main railroads. Just imagine a volkwagen hitting a cement truck.

In 1972, a BART (heavy rapid transit) train hit a two ton maintenance truck at 72 mph. The truck telescoped into the lead car about 20 feet, rolling up the floor like a sardine can opens. The first 16 passenger seats were crushed into the space of about one foot inside this roll. Luckily, no one was sitting there at the time, while the train operator escaped to the back of the car and lived.

Certainly, the current safety standards applied to mainline railroads were written in much blood - not just some bureaucrats ink. The crash worthiness of lightrail and transit vehicles should be brought up to snuff - at least in functional results when accidents do occur.

OPB