Amtrak Installing Cameras To Watch Train Engineers 294
An anonymous reader writes: In the aftermath of the derailment of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia a couple weeks ago, the company has caved to demands that it install video cameras to monitor and record the actions of the engineers driving their trains. The National Transportation Safety Board has been recommending such cameras for the past five years. Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman says the cameras will improve train safety, though the engineers' union disagrees. In 2013, the union's president said, "Installation of cameras will provide the public nothing more than a false sense of security. More than a century of research establishes that monitoring workers actually reduces the ability to perform complex tasks, such as operating a train, because of the distractive effect."
And what about the infrastructure issues? (Score:5, Insightful)
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WTF does "weakest side" have to do with anything? People farking died.
If the weakest side is responsible then the weakest side should get it's act together.
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the weakest side, however, is also the one with the least ability to add automatic preventatives.
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Re:And what about the infrastructure issues? (Score:5, Informative)
It does not always help...
One of the UK train operators has just had its permission to operate on the main lines pulled after the driver having failed to acknowledge an automatic alert in time and having had the automation apply the brakes, took it upon himself to close the valve between the brake pipe and the automatic protection system (to avoid having to come to a stop), while doing so he missed a signal set at caution (The rules require that an activation of the train protection system brings the train to a complete stop, the driver must then contact the signal box having responsibility before moving on).....
Not having slowed down the train then could not stop in time when the driver spotted the next signal (at danger), causing the train to then plow across the main line only 1 minute after the high speed commuter train that was the reason for the red signal had passed.....
This was not just a spad, this was a grade A, full monty, "hey y'all watch this' SPAD, we can only be thankful nobody was hurt.
The slightly unfortunate thing is that the train in question was a special being pulled by a steam locomotive, and the company in question specializes in running such things, but safety comes first, and the management failed totally to take the thing seriously (and not for the first time, they have a spectacularly poor record).
The RAIB writeup should be interesting (In a comments on NASAs management after Challenger sort of way).
Automatic brakes are good, but given a sufficient numpty on the foot plate, there really is nothing you can do.
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Where are the technical failsafes to limit the train's speed? Guess true security updates have been eaten by their desire for profit ...
Or, you could ask Congressional Republicans, who -- even as recently as 5 days ago -- cut/limit/deny funding for Amtrak.
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Question... was it an actual cut in current baseline funding, or a "cut" insofar as "we wanted $10 zillion extra for next year's budget, but those bastards in Congress only want to give us $9 zillion extra!" ?
If it's the former, I'd love to see proof. If it's the latter, then kindly take that partisan sound-bite-mimicking bullshit elsewhere.
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Why does the left think the answer to every problem is "more of other people's money"?
Why does the right want stuff, but not want to pay for it?
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The right doesn't "want stuff" taken from other people. They want to earn it.
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The right doesn't "want stuff" taken from other people. They want to earn it.
Right. That's why most "red" states take more money from the federal government than they contribute and the top 10 states receiving federal assistance are "red" and the bottom 10 are "blue":
http://www.politifact.com/trut... [politifact.com]
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the... [slate.com]
http://www.motherjones.com/pol... [motherjones.com]
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/... [taxfoundation.org]
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(Sorry, but "the right" in context means conservative type people, not those states that happen to vote republicans. Equivocating the two is a category error.)
Just a different group doing the taking (Score:3)
The right doesn't "want stuff" taken from other people. They want to earn it.
They don't want stuff taken from other people? Bullshit. They just want the private sector to do the taking instead of the public sector. The right is all about removing restrictions from banks, deregulating industries, allowing companies to dump whatever they want into our streams, lakes and air, etc. They very much want to take things and they don't want to pay taxes so they don't have to give anything back. They are very happy to take away your rights if they don't like what you do. They want to ta
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I don't think they want to ride on trains at other peoples' expense.
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I'd like to know why no one ever talks about the other, fairly cheap and easy method of preventing train-driver error: hiring a second driver.
Every single passenger-carrying airplane in the US has two pilots, a pilot and a co-pilot. If the pilot screws up badly, or becomes incapacitated (people do have seizures and blackouts sometimes, you never know), or just needs to go to the bathroom badly because of some shitty Mexican food he ate earlier, then the co-pilot is there to take over.
Why do trains not have
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Where are the technical failsafes to limit the train's speed?
In the brain of any competent engineer actually doing his job.
Don't forget the union (Score:2)
they are only looking to put the blame on the weakest side, which is obviously the workers
The engineers (a.k.a. "the workers") are backed by one of the most powerful unions in the country. They are are not weak by any definition.
The point of the camera is to help establish what happened. If the engineer screwed up then he should face the consequences; if he did nothing wrong then the camera would verify that he did everything right.
The death of privacy (Score:2)
Of course, the same observation could be made about monitoring police officers, day care workers, teachers, etc., but that hasn't stopped the demands to put them under video surveillance, has it?
Train engineers are federal employees, and the lives of hundreds are in their hands. Now it's their turn to be watched.
Re:The death of privacy (Score:5, Informative)
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...prolly why TFA only mentioned Amtrak employees ;)
But yes, I understand your point as well.
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Train engineers are federal employees, and the lives of hundreds are in their hands. Now it's their turn to be watched.
Federal employees? I thought they worked for Amtrack.
Re:The death of privacy (Score:4, Informative)
It is a publicly funded private corporation.
Kinda like the post office, or maybe Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac would be a better analogy.
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I used to work at a convenience store when I was in college. People would walk in and shop lift right on camera and never notice even though there was a sign on the door and the camera was in plain site with a monitor hanging from the ceiling that showed what it was recording. I doubt a camera will cause them to be distracted.
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It's more invasive and personal than a blackbox. The NTSB wants cameras in cockpits [iasa.com.au] of planes, but the pilots don't want them [wired.com].
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The USPS *is* a government entity. It's wholly owned by the US Government, therefore it's a government entity. It's largely run like a private company, but not entirely; Congress actually has a lot of say in its operations. The USPS isn't allowed to change the days they deliver mail, for instance, without Congressional approval. (They tried to eliminate delivery for one day a week not long ago and Congress refused.)
Would YOU want a camera on you all day? (Score:5, Informative)
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I can understand the engineer's union attitude towards this. Would YOU want a camera on you all day?
Back when I worked in a shop I DID have a camera on me all day and that was just for something as trivial as shoplifting, never mind having responsibility for a few hundred tons of freight/passengers barrelling down the lines upwards of 60 mph. If I can put up with it for less pay then perhaps the drivers should just suck it up and deal with it like the rest of us do.
When lives are at stake and drivers resist this sort of thing, which is there to understand why accidents happen not for some voyeur to watch
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never mind having responsibility for a few hundred tons of freight/passengers barrelling down the lines upwards of 60 mph.
Not disagreeing, but the Amtrak train that wrecked goes up to 125mph on the DC-NYC route. I've been on it myself and clocked it with a GPS speedometer app. And that's the regular train; Amtrak's Acela Express goes faster than that (I think up to 150, I'm not sure). And trains don't surround you with airbags and lock you in your seat with seat belts the way cars do, and cars only go up
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Back when I worked in a shop I DID have a camera on me all day and that was just for something as trivial as shoplifting, never mind having responsibility for a few hundred tons of freight/passengers barrelling down the lines upwards of 60 mph.
Sure, with bad drivers people could get killed, but shoplifters cost money.
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There's worse than being monitored by a camera : being monitored by your colleagues in an open space office.
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The best recent example is probably the Fukushima nuclear plant. The mana
Cop out argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Their concern is more to do with how people react under stressful situations when snap decisions are required. Knowing that your every move is being recorded and will be intensely scrutinized after the fact can alter those decisions.
That's a cop-out if I've ever heard one. Airline pilots have everything they say and every interaction with the controls recorded on every flight and somehow they manage to execute their duties quite well even in crash situations. If a train engineer is doing something they aren't supposed to be doing then they should damn well expect to get a spanking for it. Any equivocation on this point is simply trying to weasel out of being responsible for their actions.
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Maybe an hour of each person gets viewed once a week or so
Why would it ever be viewed at all, unless something happened? Who wants to waste their time watching drivers pick their noses?
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It's not like not knowing if a police car is around the bend. It's more like knowing that there's a red light camera up ahead.
Lots of people are taped all day long (Score:2)
I can understand the engineer's union attitude towards this. Would YOU want a camera on you all day? Do we really need to know whether the engineer picks his nose?
Pretty much everyone in retail has a camera on them all day. Anyone working at an airport too. And a bank. Airline pilots don't have a camera but they do have everything they say recorded. Stock traders have every piece of electronic and phone correspondence tracking in some manner.
Fact is that having a camera on you is not that big a deal as long as it is done above board and with reasonable privacy accommodations. They're really only going to review the tape if they think there is a problem. And if
The only way it would really be distracting.... (Score:2)
You can know you are being monitored, but still have to explicitly go out of your way to find the camera... and if that's what's really distracting them from doing their job, then that's a conscious choice on their part to stop doing their job in the first place, and look for the camera (and if they already know exactly where it is, then it's a still a deliberate choice to think about the camera's location instead of concentrating on their job). Ei
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bullshit claim about monitoring (Score:2)
Pretty sure no cameras, other than for making movies for entertainment, were put in engine cabs for most of the last century. If they're trying to equate some meddlesome stuffed suit bothering workers as opposed a camera, that is a stretch.
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chatsworth 2008? er, that's sure not the century I was discussing. you're funny
How about speed arrestors, instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Those cost more. This is lets throw something that you can buy on ebay for 50 bucks have it cost 5000 and break all the time. Dont forget were effectively paying for it though the massive subsidies so that long distance rail does not die.
Don't get me wrong putting in 300-600kph trains could do a ton of good for the US.
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This isn't about passenger safety, it's about doing *something* that can get you political points. "See! Look, I supported the placemen of video cameras in ALL trains for the safety of all involved!" Never mind that video cameras don't really add all that much information about what the engineer actually did or why they did it, and in the vast majority of fatal accidents in which trains are involved would provide exactly ZERO help to investigators into the cause of an accident.
It would be better to have
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So, yes, it's important that safety overrides be designed with a lick or two of sense - such as a override that automatically resets after a limited time, and/or only permits very low-speed operations, and an override that permits operation only if the doors are open less than a few millimeters, and only operates until the next stop. Was that too hard?
Cheap fix (Score:2)
Compared to automating or more frequent inspection of tracks prone to fatigue do to shared freight use.
They already have the technology (Score:2)
It's called positive train control.
All that stuff you see with automation? Yeah, there are lots of systems out there that are tried and true.
Why doesn't amtrak have it? I'm sure it has to do a lot about $$ and the unions pushing to not have it. It's the first step towards train automation.
There are many more simplistic systems which have it and it's working fine. Many trams are all automated for years and the concepts are the same. They usually have the ability to keep the driver/operator/engineer (PR te
Re:They already have the technology (Score:4, Informative)
Time to find better engineers (Score:2)
If the engineers' concentration is so fragile that they are going to be distracted by a camera, they are obviously not the right people to be operating complex machinery.
Maybe we should just replace them with automation and run the trains remotely. They could keep one engineer per train to engage the manual override in the event that someone hacks the control infrastructure and tries to do Bad Things(tm) to the trains.
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If the engineers' concentration is so fragile that they are going to be distracted by a camera, they are obviously not the right people to be operating complex machinery.
They suffer from a condition called "being human". It causes occasional failures in an otherwise operational controller-human, some very small percentage of the time. Even the highest-quality controller-humans have a non-zero failure rate.
Maybe we should just replace them with automation and run the trains remotely. They could keep one engineer per train to engage the manual override in the event that someone hacks the control infrastructure and tries to do Bad Things(tm) to the trains.
That is actually a pretty good idea, and it's more or less what PTC is intended to do, at least as far as the "avoid accidents" part of the job is concerned. Automating things further than that is also possible, although probably not really necessary.
"Distracting effect"? Citation please (Score:5, Informative)
More than a century of research establishes that monitoring workers actually reduces the ability to perform complex tasks, such as operating a train, because of the distractive effect.
Citation please? I'm an industrial engineer [wikipedia.org] professionally and monitoring of workers is a pretty big part of my professional life. I'm not aware of any credible evidence that as a general principle that monitoring workers reduces ability to perform tasks. Perhaps a clumsy system in specific circumstances but claims of any "distracting effect" sound like union representative talking points rather than actual scientific facts. In fact in my experience the opposite is typically true. I find that people tend to be more vigilant when they are aware they are being monitored as a general rule. Some people dislike it but as long as they aren't interrupted the monitoring is rarely actually distracting. Pilots in aircraft have everything they say monitored and yet somehow they manage to operate a vehicle that is even more complex than a train quite competently.
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Monitoring != micromanaging (Score:2)
I bet the only time it's a distraction is when you have a helicopter boss who is constantly nagging you if you aren't always 100% focused on your task.
More or less yes. Monitoring is not the same as micromanaging. When part of your job is public safety (pilots, engineers, cops, etc) then a bit of passive monitoring is very much in the public interest and generally will outweigh the worker's right to privacy while performing their job.
Where companies can record (Score:2)
It's a train he has no right to privacy.
Not strictly true at least with regard to being monitored by an employer. There are Federal and often State laws regarding whether recording is permitted [privacyrights.org] in some circumstances. While employers usually have wide latitude they cannot legally record anywhere without limitation. Furthermore when a union gets involved then the right of the company to record may be subject to a collective bargaining agreement.
Relevancy? (Score:2)
More than a century of research establishes that monitoring workers actually reduces the ability to perform complex tasks, such as operating a train, because of the distractive effect.
Considering that CCTV have only been readily available for the last 40 years is the other 60 years of study even relevant? I would consider a camera sitting unobtrusively in a corner as being very different than a person staring at me every second. In the latter case I would be concerned that the person would jump in and chastise/correct me if I didn't do what he thought I should be doing. That would make me second guess myself and would be as distraction. A camera could not do that and would not be an issu
The public wants that false sense of security (Score:2)
That false sense of security is just what the public wants. The TSA is doing exactly that for airplanes.
Seriously, consider the recent derailment that has triggered this announcement. They already know the train was accelerating into the curve, and travelling faster than any permanent speed limit would allow. A GPS-based system (including accelerometers to assist the GPS when going through tunnels) would have been able to advise the engineer that the train was travelling at nearly twice the permanent posted
Union what. (Score:2)
I think the union just acknowledged that nobody is safe with their drivers, no matter what. Shameful that they are pressing the attack in light of the fact that one of their drivers is responsible.
No I am using the term "drivers" divisively. If they truly were engineers, they would be demanding safety protocols to be implemented and equipment to be installed.
Re:Engineers? (Score:5, Informative)
They used to be called engineers in the UK, in the early days, then the term fell out of use. The original term was "engine-man". BBC articles are so helpful.
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Here they call them computer programmers.
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Here they call them rockstar brogrammers
Re:30 years ago.... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are aware that plenty of people are monitored for their entire shift in much less safety critical jobs, like bank tellers, grocery or retail store cashiers, dock workers, etc, yes? As to the speed being controlled by computer, they've been working on that for some time, but apparently the radio network to convey all the necessary information to the control box is massively behind schedule.
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radio?? well there is your problem. ... red means slow, etc...
Just paint the railroad ties a different color for each max allowed speed, then install a color sensor under the car.
Re:30 years ago.... (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking as someone who spent three and a half years working on Positive Train Control software, it's not as simple as throwing a GPS on the train.
There are a huge number of operating rules that must be enforced besides just a base speed limit. Not only does every mile of track have a speed limit that can vary widely, every type of train has a maximum safe operating speed that must also be considered. Then there are all the temporary speed limits that the computer has to know about. If there's a work crew out on the tracks, they drop the speed limit. If there's damage to the track, they drop the speed limit. etc. Then there are all the signals along the route. There's half a dozen different types across the country depending on what has been upgraded and what hasn't and they all govern how fast you are allowed to go at that location at that time. Then you have to throw in all of the other things along the track like grade crossings and switches. There's a bunch of different types of each and they all have different rules on what you have to do when you approach them. To top it off, you can't go anywhere until a dispatcher grants you authority to run on the track. And that's done in any of a dozen different ways depending on who owns the track and where it is.
Did I mention that the operating rules are different for each railroad? They are and you have to make sure you follow the right rules.
Then you can have the added complexity of interoperability. Every railroad, by contract, is allowed to operate on each others track. They even contract out engineers between each other. So you can have a BNSF engineer operating a CSX locomotive on UP track. And you have to have to figure out which rules apply in that case because they're different than an Amtrak engineer operating the same CSX locomotive on the same UP track. Or a BNSF engineer operating a KCS locomotive on UP track.
Then when you think you have that all figured out, throw in the fact that we have agreements with Canada that let our trains run back and forth between two countries.
Once you have all of that complexity, you have to be able to predict how long it takes to slow a train down so you know how far back you have to get off the throttle and/or hit the brakes. That calculation is impacted by the number of cars in the train, the weight of the cars, the grade of the track, the curves you're riding on, and even how long it takes for the air pressure to be let out of the brake line (a long time in a mile long train). There's a ton of calculus being done by the computer several times a second to keep an accurate estimation of your braking curve. Beyond that, the computer has to give the engineer a warning before cutting in and doing his job for him. So you have to predict the stopping distance with the added distance you'd travel if you wait a specified time after warning but before you enforce the stop.
Now, you have all of that. Then you have to factor in that your GPS isn't always accurate so you can't always count on the fact that it will tell you precisely where you are. Running through a tunnel cuts off your GPS feed. As you get towards the mouth of the tunnel, you get a lot of multipath errors that make your GPS location jump around pretty damn fast so you have to program the computer to account for it. The backup is the wheel tachometer that lets the computer know how fast the train is going and you can assume that a train isn't going to be jumping off the tracks 500 feet into a field to the left so that does make the job a little easier. But just when you think you've solved the problem, you have to deal with the fact that the diameter of the wheel isn't 100% constant. Sure, it's a steel wheel and it doesn't change rapidly. But it does wear down as the train is driven. So you have to keep calibrating the wheel diameter over the miles because even a small variation can lead to a significant position error over a long trip. A 0.1% error over a 1,000 mile trip will have you a mile off from where you really are. And 1,000 mile trips are a daily occurrence with trains.
So yeah, it's not as easy as just throwing a GPS on your locomotive and calling it good.
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But, but... Google can drive a car you know.....
Interesting but you forgot some stuff... Often trains travel without being able to stop within the distance the engineer can see, so putting all the above in some kind of complex system still doesn't prevent the most common accidents. There is no way you can keep some nutty driver from parking a bus full of people on the tracks or some crazy gravel truck trying to beat the train across the crossing.
People are acting like the automatic enforcement of speed
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Last time I read about it, it's estimated that PTC will only stop about 40% of the accidents.
Thing is, as complicated as PTC really is, it's still the low hanging fruit that's the easier problem to solve than most of the rest. And considering that it will save lives, it's worth it in the long term.
Track and equipment maintenance standards being beefed up will account for another chunk. But you're right. It's really difficult to plan for that dipshit who stops on the tracks around a blind corner.
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you can assume that a train isn't going to be jumping off the tracks 500 feet into a field to the left so that does make the job a little easier.
Too bad Google Maps doesn't make that kind of assumption.
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Yes, all that may be true, but enforcing permanent speed limits via a self-contained system would have prevented several major accidents and could have been implemented in minimum time and money so it could actually have been deployed. All that fancy-ass consideration has driven up the price and delayed the implementation of anything at all except the sharp wits of a tired old train engineer, who probably doesn't know how worn the wheels are and only remembers a few of the thousands of regulations that some
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So yeah, it's not as easy as just throwing a GPS on your locomotive and calling it good.
Still, even a partial solution (e.g. one that matches the train's GPS location, if known, against a table of specified maximum-safe-under-any-circumstances speed limits for that location) would prevent a train wreck in certain cases (such as the recent one that prompted this article). I'm all for full PTC, but I don't think the perfect needs to be made the enemy of the good here.
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Yeah. We had that problem solved a while back. I was just bringing up the fact that a GPS is nice but it's not 100% reliable, especially in canyons and tunnels. And the backup system wasn't as simple as plugging in another sensor. It requires more work than that.
The point being made is that "GPS and some simple software" isn't going to cut it. It's a difficult problem to solve. A lot more difficult than you might think if you didn't have the background to really know what is involved.
Re:US rail system (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, the American Exceptionalist Butthurt. Even when your best is half what other countries with far less money can do....'Murica! Fuck yeah!
Re:US rail system (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you care?
It's sad that the rest of the world still feels the need to match us while acting like we are crap.
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No, you don't. You see what we choose to show you, and you react in precisely the way we want and expect you to react. And you help us by telling yourself that it's your idea.
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Nascar Race? You mean because they "raise" the flag and sing the National Anthem before the race and usually launch fireworks after it? Nearly every sporting event in the US starts with raising the flag and singing the National Anthem. I've been told Toronto (Ontario, Canada) Blue Jays (Major League Baseball) games are preceded by two national anthems. I see a few Canadian flags here in Wisconsin along with some Swedish and Norwegian ones as well. Plenty of Mexican ones flying in early May. I haven't heard
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There's a reason they play the National Anthem of the winners for the Olympics. You shouldn't be ashamed of your Anthem or boo it, ever. Maybe ignoring it makes sense (it can be a bit "over the top" sometimes) but booing should definitely be considered bad form.
Just because England doesn't do it doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't do it.
Once again we all fall victim to bad generalities based upon our own perspectives, rather than actually speaking about things we know.
Re: US rail system (Score:4, Insightful)
It is sad how other countries know so little about the U.S. That they take the behavior of a small minority of people in a couple of states and try to define the entire nation by it.
Yeah, just like the small minority of Muslims who burn American Flags.
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He's obviously not talking about freight, he's talking about passenger transportation. Since the US spans a continent, and has large ports on both coasts, and also because it produces a lot of raw materials for export (such as coal), it's no surprise it does a lot of freight hauling on railroads. But that doesn't help people who need to get somewhere. The days of hobos are long past.
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Probably because we don't want to spend 7 days going from LA to NY with 19th century technology when we can do it in less than 0.5 days using 20th century technology.
Or if it's only 300 miles away we still prefer a car because we can depart and return on whatever schedule we want, and when we get there we have our own self provided means of transportation that we can use on-demand instead of paying up the ass for a taxi or a rental car.
It's called being practical, and that's why we don't give a shit about p
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Even Mussolini made it illegal to report that the trains didn't run on time.
Wait, hang on.
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For the same reason you still have plenty of humans working to build cars... the auto & rail labor unions are rather strong.
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A light rail system is a whole different ball game from the common rail system. Sure, if you could build a whole new system that only had automated trains on it, automation would be easy because you could purpose build the automation systems into your infrastructure.
However, in this case, the problem is pretty complex and where I think it *could* be automated with sufficient effort and cost, I seriously doubt it's going to be cost effective. Railroads run on razor thin margins as it is, with huge equipm
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Re:It only increases accountability (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, speaking of Amtrak employee accountability, I have a story about that. A few years ago my family took a train ride across the country. When we changed trains in Chicago I noticed that the reading light in my sleeping compartment was stuck on, which of course was bad if I wanted to actually sleep. I found the friendly and helpful attendant and reported it, and her reaction was like watching a balloon deflate.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"If we report damage they take it out of our wages," she said.
"What! What do you mean take it out of your wages?" I asked.
"If a car is damaged under my watch I have to pay for it," she said.
"Well," I said, taking out my swiss army knife, "I guess there's nothing to see here."
I have to say that I've never encountered such a nice, enthusiastic, friendly group of people with such an abysmally low morale as the crew of a cross-country train. With passengers they're great, but all through the trip I'd see two or three congregated having low muttered conversations. It didn't take me long to figure out they were talking about management. And while the experience was wonderful, the equipment was in horrible shape. It was like traveling in a third world country.
With management that bad, more data doesn't equal more accountability and better performance. It means scapegoating.
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at best, if it shows that the engineer did something wrong and it turns out they were trained to do that wrong thing, the training can be fixed. More likely however it's just to have a record of what the engineer did in their final moments.
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Brings up a fun question... do Amtrak trains carry something similar to an aircraft in-flight recorder?
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Brings up a fun question... do Amtrak trains carry something similar to an aircraft in-flight recorder?
Yes, yes they do.
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Uh, anyone that has ever been involved in a driver facing camera camera system says their decent at improving safety, if managed correctly.
I say this as the IT manager of the storage system for the camera data of a fleet of taxi's. You review the cameras for safety issues before an incident occurs. The personnel management at this particular company does a very good job at only using the camera reviews to look for safety issues, other issues seen on safety reviews do not get turned in to the HR department.
Re:It only increases accountability (Score:5, Insightful)
Dunno - it's pretty hard to account for why the dude was doing 100+ mph on a 50mph curve.
Not saying it's his fault, but at least the camera would have absolved/proven any culpability on his part almost immediately.
Now normally, cameras would be a bad idea IMHO, but this is a public service operated by public funds.
Re:It only increases accountability (Score:4, Insightful)
No, cameras are never a bad idea for public-service employees. A good example of this is bus drivers. All the public buses I've taken in recent years had cameras on board, showing both the drivers and the passengers, along with signs warning that assaulting a bus driver carries a stiff prison sentence. The cameras are ostensibly to protect the drivers from bad passengers, but they obviously can also be used to see what the driver was doing in case of a crash, which is a good thing.
There isn't much difference between a train driver and a bus driver, except that the train driver doesn't have to interact with the public/passengers. There's no good reason at all to not have their activities recorded on camera while they're working.
Re:It only increases accountability (Score:4, Interesting)
Dunno - it's pretty hard to account for why the dude was doing 100+ mph on a 50mph curve.
Oh, I could probably imagine a few scenarios. Probably the most likely being that dispatch told him to make up some time.
Ultimately, the engineer is responsible for the safety of the passengers, but if he chose to obey the speed limit when he was told to get there faster, the fact that he saved all those people will be of little consolation when he gets fired and can't get hired on anywhere else because 1) there isn't anyone else and 2) he disobeyed a direct order from dispatch.
Re: It only increases accountability (Score:5, Informative)
You have no clue. I've been running Amtrak trains for 18 years. There is no intentional speeding, over 10mph and you lose your federally issued lisence for 30 days, second time you get caught 6 months and probably won't have a job to come back to. That's all laid out in the CFR. Everything is recorded, no one would dare. Remember we mess up and we're right there in an accident with you. Here's what I assume happened from my experience. He was newish to that route, I've read 2 -3 weeks, thought he was somewhere else, sped up, realized it and dumped the brakes. It takes years to know a route.
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Automated trains are very common around the world. Lots and lots of subways are automated, sections of Japans Metro are for example. At a larger scale RioTinto's iron ore operations use driverless trains for bulk carrying of ore from the mines to the ports in North West Australia.
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Trains are complex machines. Most of the time, they work flawlessly, but things can go wrong fast. Broken knuckles between Cars. Car Derailments, Cars, (Ignoring the warning signals, Crossing the tracks, getting hit) Tornado, ETC. Youtube them if you don't believe me.
A human in the cockpit is going to assess those situations much faster than an automated system can in many of these situations.
You want to stop trains from speeding? screw the cameras, Put GPS in the engine (if they don't have them already), m
Controlling speed and reacting to problems (Score:2)
A human in the cockpit is going to assess those situations much faster than an automated system can in many of these situations.
Depends on the human and depends on the automation and depends on the circumstances. Your assertion is far to broad to be correct as a general proposition.
You want to stop trains from speeding? screw the cameras, Put GPS in the engine
Already being worked on [gps.gov] but controlling train speed isn't quite that simple. GPS has trouble in some locations on the ground so a reliable speed limiting system would necessitate something a bit more complicated. However I agree that there really isn't any good reason not to have it be a part of the technology package on trains.
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Because the engineer's salary is a pittance compared to the automation costs and the liability risks of turning hundreds of tones of vehicle loos on the public roadways. Railroads have already gone to great lengths to reduce their labor costs already. They are already down to TWO persons on a freight train running from Point to Point, and I don't see them really gaining from removing another one.... Passenger trains will ALWAYS have at least some employees on them....
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't here many saying it's not *possible* only that it is not practical and cost effective.
Sure, you want automated trains, we can do that, but remember that our rail road system is a patch work of private and public companies which runs on a regulation scheme that was largely fleshed out before the turn of the 20th century (over 100 years ago). Plus, the incentive for automation by the rail roads would be largely cost, unless the regulations are forcing them into it. The salaries of the engineer and conductor on a train are a pittance compared to the total operating costs of the train, so there is little incentive to automate. Just keep the human in the loop, it's cheaper in the short term. Rail Roads run on razor thin margins... So profit today is very important.
The reason we are having this "camera" discussion is more about political points than actually trying to help the system get safer. Cameras won't help anything, except the political fortunes of those suggesting them. The vast majority of fatal accidents involving trains will never be prevented by cameras OR automation because they have to do with vehicles being on the tracks at crossings when the train arrives. You might have great video of the accident, or get the breaks applied a few milliseconds sooner with automation, but neither will prevent people getting killed..
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Plain old walking isn't very safe (>6000 deaths per year average [includes bicyclists]), and much less safe than passengers on a train (7 deaths per year average).
Of course, it's because of those other forms of transportation that walking isn't safe.
http://journalistsresource.org... [journalistsresource.org]
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