Book review: The Lunatic Express

Authored by Carl Hoffman in 2010 (ISBN 978-0-7679-2980-6). The subtitle is "discovering the world via its most dangerous buses, boats, trains and planes".

I expected to be shocked and humored. I was, but less than I expected, as the story is as much about the author as it is about his travels.

During his 159-day excursion across four continents (five, if one defines Indonesia as belonging to Oceania) and 19 countries Hoffman opted for the most dangerous, least pleasant mechanisms. Never first class, always steerage. He would ask locals their opinions about such-and-such a conveyance and used their warnings as confirmation that it was the correct ride for him. Hoffman speaks only English and overcame this limitation pretty well, in his estimation, in most places, with the exception of China, the most modern and safe of his destinations and the least tolerant of his ignorance.

Except for the North American portions he traveled through extreme weather: very hot through South America, Africa and India; very cold through Afghanistan, China, Mongolia (40 degrees below zero) and Russia. None of the warm-weather transportation included air-conditioning; indeed, most did not have windows. The cold-weather transportation occasionally provided a space heater.

Most of the rides were dangerous, or at least statistically much more dangerous than the buses, boats, trains and planes that I am familiar with. A statistician the author hired to estimate the risk of death during the 159 days came up with one in 2,000. This was risk of death only; accidents were also possible, perhaps more probable than death. Further, the estimate covered the transportation only and excluded the risk of robbery, murder and kidnapping. The author described those latter risks as considerably smaller than one might imagine, with the exception of his travels through Afghanistan.

Of the dozens of examples from this book, one from Senegal in 2002:

The Joola had a rated capacity of 580 passengers ... of the 1,863 confirmed passengers [plus other unconfirmed] ... [61] survived, only one of them a woman. Three hundred more people died on the Joola than on the Titanic, and nearly every single one of the dead came from the town of Ziguinchor -- among them its best and brightest students.

Why so dangerous? After all, the technology necessary to make a bus stop, a boat float, a train ride or a plane fly is known the world over. Hoffman cites corruption and the lack of good governance as one primary reason and poverty as another. One might question corruption as a significant factor. In other words, even without honest government inspection, after enough serious accidents from a given provider the customers would stay away. But, many of the operators the author interviewed paid bribes to inspectors and policemen that significantly impacted their operating expenses. Funds that might have used to repair brakes or windshields, or create schedules, evaporated instead. Hoffman repeated over and over the effects of poverty. Transportation can be fast, reliable, comfortable and safe to varying degrees, and all those elements cost money. Those without money make do with very little of those elements, including safety.

Hoffman's trip started with a 19-hour bus ride from his home outside Washington, D.C. to Toronto, via New York city, and ended 158 days later with a multi-day bus ride from Los Angeles back home via Las Vegas, Vail, Kansas City and Pittsburgh. He had planned to return before Christmas but was unable to arrange it. He strongly hinted at his divorce, and that the cause was his extended absence. He also has three children at home, who ages he did not reveal, and he wrote often of missing his family. Normally I have little patience for people who abandon their families in favor of travel for work. In this case, though, his feelings on the subject are powerful, and perhaps beyond his ability to control them. When his wife asks, "how can you love someone who might be killed or kidnapped or die in a plane crash and puts his family through that pain and worrying?" he responds to us:

But how could you not live that life, taste that taste, after you'd had it?

The life he refers to is the vivid, dangerous, exciting existence of meeting new humans and sharing their world. All the poor people he met were extremely generous, feeding him from their small portions, buying his meals, watching over him and his things. Most traveled in large family groups, always crowding into spaces. He describes luxury and wealth as the ability to avoid contact with others.