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I've never experienced the party going off the rails. I guess I've just joined relatively mature groups.
I think people have lots of definitions for what constitutes railroading. I personally don't think anything in the meme constitutes going off the rails.
In my view, if you build or plan the next session based on where you think they're gonna go next and what they seem like they want to do as players, and then someone goes "Well can I actually just make a 90-degree turn off the road to the city that we're talked about going to last week into these random woods instead of engaging with the hours of content you made for us," you aren't railroading them for going "sure, but I'll have to pause the session here so I can put the time and prep into this that you deserve as players, or we play Dnd today."
Matt Colville has a great vid on this, but I can't remember its title. I think he's done a few videos that talked about railroading.
We've had a few instances where the party decided we want to go do thing, but there was no way the DM had prepared. We let him know "this is a thing we'd like to pursue later" and get on with the planned events. We try to remember that his time is valuable!
This is the ideal. I think a problem also comes up because I think a lot of people (DMs included) feel like "peak Dnd" is when you could in theory, go anywhere and do anything your party wants, and you just need to review few quick notes and be ready to go.