'Speeding train' makes no sense

Beatrix says something about jumping on a motorcycle onto a 'speeding train' for Bill.

It sounds fine on the surface, until you start thinking about it - not to mention how it reminds the viewer of Jackie Chan movies, specifically Police Story 3, if memory serves, where a woman indeed does this. More impressively, I think it's even the actual actor, not a stuntwoman.

So, it's perfectly in the realm of possibilities to jump onto a moving train while riding a motorcycle.

However, she doesn't say 'moving train', does she? She doesn't say 'fast-moving train', either.

She says SPEEDING train. Speeding?

As in breaking the speed limit - that's what the word means, right?

Railroads don't have speed limits in the same sense as roads, stroads and streets meant for other type of vehicles, but they do have some kind of speed limitations.

Trains don't roam freely, like cars, for example, but they are fixed on metal tracks. They are also usually not driven by some random individuals with varying skills and criminality acceptance levels, as cars are, but they are usually operated by trained corporate workers, whose job it is to drive the trains in very specific, pre-described manner with all kinds of rules, regulations, schedules and precise methods of operating the massive hunks of metal.

This means that 'obeying a speed limit' is not as much a matter of choice, not as 'voluntary' as it is with cars - the consequences of breaking speed limits when you are a train driver, would be pretty close to instant and severe, and you could not escape those the way you can with a car. Often, cops don't catch 'speeding cars' (or speeding drivers - I'm still not sure whether cars or trains CAN speed, because that seems to be a choice-based activity only applicable to generally bipedal entities with agency and a government-issued 'persons'), let alone 'speeding motorbikes', so things are a bit more fluctuating on the roads, stroads and streets.

Speed limits of trains can vary, especially by the type of route, train, line, and so on, so it's not necessarily as much 'set in stone' as other speed limits are.

It's common all around the civilized, developed countries to have trains slow down near cities, heavily populated areas and certain train stations and stops (playing Densha de Go! pays off).

This means that generally speaking, trains are more free to travel fast in more rural, less populated areas (think of 'long-distance travel'), while they are more restricted in that sense near big cities and train stations with lots of people around.

Now, what constitutes a 'speeding train' and how fast is it?

From what I have written above, we can realize, there's no one answer to this. When there's a 20 kmh speed limitation near some populated area with a dangerous curve near a big station, it would only take 21 kmh for the train to be 'speeding', technically speaking.

This means that the phrase 'speeding train' is not only really stupid thing to say, whoever wrote it is pretty ignorant and thoughtless when it comes to writing scripts.

How can anyone think 'speeding train' is always somehow fast? Wouldn't it have been more accurate and immersive to use language that actually implies a great speed, instead of leaving it to terminology that dictates the speed can, indeed, be very low?

What's so impactful, hyperbolic or cool about using a motorcycle to jump onto a train that goes 21 km per hour? NOTHING!

Sure, when the speed limit is 270 kmh (which is pretty darn rare, but in Japan, you can find this kind of stuff because of Shinkansen trains and even the Maglev stuff), going 271 kmh is impressive and super fast, and it'd be pretty darn challenging to be able to jump onto such a train and not kill yourself in the process.

But because we're never specified what area, what country, what kind of train/line/etc. it is, the 'speeding' can be as low as 21 kmh, making this line really stupid and the writer of the line an ignorant fool.

Why couldn't Beatrix say something that makes more sense?

Let's see.. how about: '..jumping onto a fast-moving Shinkansen train..'?

Bam! No doubt about the speed, and the line has a strong impact. (Not to mention keeping up with the Japanese Culture-theme so prevalent in these movies)

But a SPEEDING train can be almost any speed, so it has NO IMPACT whatsoever, which means, the line makes no sense.