runicbinary wrote this great response to a Superman meme posted by dankmemeuniversity about how their favorite thing about Superman is he isn’t Batman. Nothing against Batman of course, but they are very different superheroes. Superman’s approach might not always be the smartest, but he is an undeniably good dude. Anyway, this post puts it much better than I could:
Source: dankmemeuniversity / runicbinary
… how much terminal damage would have been done to the child by the sudden acceleration caused by Superman grabbing him during a fly-by ? …
That’s nothing compared to the serious Gs experienced by the passengers in the train. It is going to be carnage in the carriages. No seat belts.
The Flash grabs people at a sprint; Superman catches people falling and stationary without causing them harm, and you think this is the one time in comic book history that the physics of a super fly-by would actually apply?
I’m with John, it’s more likely that he’s hospitalized half the passengers on the train as it just went from full speed to a dead stop. Imagine the children and elderly on that train, or people who were just standing up getting ready for the next stop.
It’s likely the loss of like and injury from his rescue would have exceeded his valiant effort.
As far as comparing Superman’s reaction time to a ‘normal dude’s who had 4 seconds to make a decision, that’s a horrible example. Much like the flash, to move at speeds far past that of what a human can do, Supe’s need to process information far faster, it’s what stops him from flying through a building when he is traveling at full speed, before he notices it, and is able to react to it’s presence. His reaction time for the train is far longer than 4 seconds, the comics haven’t actually suggested how long but as he’s capable of hitting 186,000 miles per second according to cannon, and the fastest human sprint is Image result for fastest human sprint speed
44.72 km/h… I’m going to say he had time to notice the train, formulate a plan, think about his tax returns, ponder how he’d look if he’d dye his hair blonde, wonder what he was going to watch on netflix, remember the girl was in danger, and still rescue her without destroying the train.
These days Passenger Rail in the US is only a tiny fraction of rail traffic. It is far more likely that any train he stops would be a freight train. So an Engineer or two – not a bunch of passengers. On the other hand some of those freight trains carry things you don’t want spilliing all over the surrounding landscape….