Train wreck

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Train wreck at Gare Montparnasse, Paris, France, 1895

For the American rock band, see Trainwreck (band).

A train wreck most often occurs as a result of an accident, such as when a train wheel jumps off a track in a derailment, or miscommunication, as when a moving train meets another train on the same track, or when a boiler explosion occurs. Train wrecks were occasionally staged for public entertainment; crowds watched as two vacant trains were deliberately sent speeding toward each other.

1 Legal consequences
2 As metaphor
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Legal consequences

Because train wrecks usually cause widespread property damage as well as injury or death, the intentional wrecking of a train in regular service is often treated as an extremely serious crime. For example, in the U.S. state of California, the penalty for intentionally causing a non-fatal train wreck is life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.^[1] For a fatal train wreck, the possible sentences are either life without the possibility of parole, or death.

[edit] As metaphor

The term is sometimes used metaphorically to describe a disaster that is foreseeable but unavoidable. For example, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's asserted that a government shutdown would be a "train wreck."^[2]

The term "train wreck" is also used metaphorically to describe something disastrous yet inevitable, or distasteful yet morbidly fascinating ("You don't want to stare, but you just can't look away"). Thus a person in poor condition (due to sickness or stress) may be described as a "train wreck".^{[citation needed]}

In software development, method chains of the style: getThis().getThat().getTheOther() are referred to as "train wrecks". The term is pejorative because their use breaks the Law of Demeter in addition to being stylistically cumbersome.