Why is it suddenly so difficult to drive trains?

The recent spate of train crashes (the D.C. Metro crash being the latest, but the green line T crash in Boston also fresh in my mind) leaves me asking, why is it suddenly so difficult to drive trains? It seems like there's been an uptick in recent years, despite systems that have been in place for years and have far less hazards than, say, coordinating airplanes. And it makes me question my recent post about why we can't go back to more train travel.

Photos of the D.C. crash

Older is better

As newspapers (the old way of spreading news) fall to the Internet (the new way), I found this Slate article about train travel very interesting. It's a classic case of the old way being more efficient and enjoyable, even though most people would think trains are better left in the past.

Note the 220-m.p.h. speed of a train in China, and how much faster mail could get around the U.S. on a rail system than by plane. Those are just two interesting observations I found in this article.

If trains were brought back in their most luxurious, efficient form, it could take a lot of congestion off the highways and avoid a lot of the fear when traveling by air.

But the same questions face trains as those that face newspapers: is the system to stuck in one way to be upgraded to a modern model? Now that it has been trimmed back to its 1881 form (see the article), can rail travel ever be great again?