It is a regretful fact that fatal accidents sometimes still occur despite ongoing efforts to reduce accident risk and ensure the safety of railways. At the Amagasaki accident in April 2005, one carbody was severely damaged due to side impact. Static and dynamic compression tests were performed to evaluate the carbody side strength using full-size partial carbodies followed by FE analyses under the same loading conditions as in the empirical tests. The numerical results obtained by FE analyses were consistent with the empirical results in terms of the load-time characteristics as well as deformation of carbodies. A method was developed to evaluate the impact deformation behavior of a carbody subject to side loads by using FE analysis.