Japan’s Shinkansen bullet trains are considered the gold standard of transportation engineering. In more than six decades of operation, these high-speed trains—traveling up to 320 km/h—have recorded zero fatal passenger accidents and maintain an extraordinary punctuality of within one minute, even across earthquakes, storms, and millions of daily commuters. It is one of the most impressive safety and reliability records in the world. • Since launching in 1964, Shinkansen trains have transported