Safety Inspector Fired for Finding Too Many Defects Could Cost Railroad Millions

It is intentional but you have the wrong reason. Right now all of the class one railroads are trying a business strategy called precision schedule railroading in order to boost their stock prices. The meat and potatoes behind PSR is to lower the railroad's operation ratio as lower as possible by reducing anything that isn't absolutely critical to making the business run. That means cutting your staff to below a skeleton crew level while fighting the FRA to allow for one man crew trains, running extremely long trains even if it literally divides a community, and deferring maintenance unless uncle Sam wants to pitch in. In some extreme cases of PSR some railroads have even gone as far as closing down tracks in sections with multiple main lines.

I feel like the car industry doesn't compete at all with cargo rail. You don't move tons of coal with a semi. That would be astronomically more expensive.

You should seek out the conspiracy community.

No, that would be planes.