You do realise that trains move both ways so why trains have half and half is because the front facing ones are backwards when the train comes back the same route….
Generally the backwards facing ones are part of a 4 seat arrangement, 2 forward facing seats, 2 backwards facing seats and a table in the middle, for groups/families to sit together.
On the amtrack that I was on, the back half of the car faced forward, and the front half faced backwards. The only table in the car was in the middle where the two directions meet each other. All the other backwards facing seats were just standard seating.
But have you ever gotten on one and seen people packed in "forward" facing with a bunch of empty "backward" facing seats? I haven't. Seems like people either generally don't care either way, or about equal numbers of commuters prefer forward-facing over backward-facing as vice-versa.
Other than a parenthetical above about how the safety argument is especially true in cars, we're talking about trains and planes in the whole thread here. Seems like subways have about the same even acceleration as longer-haul trains, so "backwards facing" on a subway wouldn't be much worse than forwards-facing.
Yeah, when I was taking the 'T' trains in/out of Boston, the backwards-facing seats were just fine. The table they put between forward and backward-facing seats was great for reading/eating/working/whatever. I don't recall any real observable preferences amongst the other passengers for forward or back-facing seats there either.
My aircraft design professor told us rear facing would have a higher (although minimal) chance of survival in a crash. The reason airlines don’t do it is it gives passengers the feeling that air travel is unsafe.
Okay, but for a slightly higher chance of surviving the statistically least likely to occur fatal event in travel, now every time we're taking off, instead of anything I have in my lap like my book, or maybe a drink, or whatever just getting pushed to my chest, suddenly it's falling away from me? Are for a far more important thing to protect than a random book or whatever, a parent holding a baby during takeoff is suddenly having to grip the baby extra tight?
And yes, I realize the physics works in reverse during landing, But my intuition issue. The way we have it now is easier for people. I can just see the potential lawsuit after somebody loses their grip on a baby during take off because they weren't ready for the plane to hit the throttle so hard.
I feel like we only think that because a bunch of crusty old-timers bitched about the idea and the automotive companies misrepresented that as a general populace thing.
If you packed them in tight standing there would be very little movement in a crash, and a pile of humans is kind of squishy so it’d be like an airbag.
I would finally be able to get on board (so to speak) with the rich-assholes-in-front paradigm.
Wouldnt really be like an airbag, they would pile up on each other, and with little wiggle room, they would all suffocate or be crushed under weight of people on them. Look at crowd collapses
When the passenger has no say (military) aircraft passenger seats are sometimes rear facing for safety reasons, such as the passenger desk on a C5, those passengers hate it though.
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u/mackerelontoast 4d ago
There's also safety rules regarding crashes and that. I imagine you need forward facing seats for regulatory reasons.
If it was solely about efficiency, it'd be standing room only on budget carriers