The derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio — a mere 38 miles from Weirton — understandably captivated the attention of Americans for much of this year. A giant plume of black smoke tends to do that, and it also tends to lead to emotionally-driven decisions that will do little, if anything, to prevent the next disaster.

While the company should absolutely aid those affected in Ohio, Pennsylvania and even West Virginia, which is crisscrossed with 2,000 miles of freight rail track, sobriety is needed in the face of sensationalist claims in the “if it bleeds, it leads” category. Put simply, all available data show rail is a safe mode of transportation and is a model for the world writ large.

While lawmakers in Washington contemplate sweeping new regulations, legislators should move deliberately and reject proposals that have far more to do with longstanding lobbying goals of special interests than improving the safety of an industry that already is one of the safest in the land.

Crises may be the most consistent way to force Congress to act, yet action must be rational and weigh appropriate tradeoffs.

Two main problems stand out in a bill under consideration in the U.S. Senate. First are what would be broad new measures for moving hazardous materials, specifically limits on the size of a train. It’s a solution in search of a problem, because the size of the train was not a factor in the Ohio derailment. In fact, the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, has said to date the Ohio derailment was caused by a faulty wheel that caught fire and failed to trigger a detector fast enough. Moreover, rail industry expert, Michael Gorman, argues the size of trains has little do with their performance. This pushback against the length of a train is not a safety concern but rather a bad-faith effort by labor unions to ensure more workers –that is, dues-paying members — for the simple math that fewer, longer trains mean fewer dues-paying members.

The rational response to this Senate proposal is to wait until the findings of the independent National Academies of Sciences are available. The organization, which comprises top scientists from around the country, is currently studying the issue in depth, as requested by Congress. The study will examine some of the key safety measures railroads currently take with lengthy trains, such as using multiple locomotives within a long train to reduce the physical force on a train, making it less prone to derailments.

Second, the bill seeks to lock into place the current model used by large railroads to have two people in the locomotive. It seems sensical enough and proponents often point to aviation copilots, yet the train in Ohio had three people in the cab and trains running on the ground are much different than planes in the air.

The Cardinal Institute recently joined a large number of other state-based policy organizations in opposing a similar regulatory proposal in Washington, noting that there is no safety case for the federal government to dictate such terms, which are traditionally bargained between management and labor. Like the proposed rule, legislation in this area fails to account for current and future technological innovations, the fact that U.S. passenger railroads already operate with one person as do smaller freight railroads, or that extensive analysis disproves the need for intervention.

Rushing to implement sweeping changes without thorough consideration of the potential impacts could lead to unintended consequences –including pushing more freight onto trucks thus increasing environmental damage along with the risk of accidents on highways. As economist Thomas Sowell insightfully quipped, “there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.”

The current frenzy in Congress, driven by politics and special interests, wrongly suggests that the freight rail network is a fundamental failure. The data underscore that the opposite is true, that the network is, indeed, quite safe. The exercise serves as yet another example of Congress siding with favored constituencies and turning away from facts.

Rahm Emanual once remarked, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” By that, Mr. Emanual meant that crises could be used as pretext for ramming through ideas, policies, legislation, etc., that had little, if anything, to do with the underlying issue, for a crisis creates the urge to something, anything, to correct a supposed problem.

Let’s not fall victim to this line of thinking once again.

Garrett Ballengee is executive director of the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy.