Measured against most freight trains, passenger trains are comparatively light weight and easy to stop.

Thus, the Amtrak that hit the Ford Fusion in Canton, MI this Thursday only weighed 530 tons and, with Michigan rails in such sorry shape, it was only traveling at roughly 70 miles per hour. As a result, the occupants of the Ford Fusion had only been dead for a half-mile before they came to a rest.

An MI-Abrams main battle tank weighs a mere 68 tons and has a maximum speed of about 60 miles an hour under ideal circumstances. It can’t hit you as hard as a passenger train and a passenger train can’t hit you anywhere nearly as hard as an average freight train.

But that’s not the knowledge that makes me special. You could have read most of it in the Friday edition of the Detroit News or the Detroit Free Press … as I most certainly did.

The knowledge that I have, and that you don’t, follows the break.

Click here to read on, my friend.