Why There Are Still Trains in America Without Life-Saving Technology

[elleng]

'On a summer afternoon in Southern California nine years ago, a commuter train blew through a stop signal and ran head-on into an oncoming freight train, killing 25 people.

After investigators determined that the crash could have been prevented by automatic-braking technology, Congress ordered all passenger railroads to install new systems by 2016. Since then, Congress has extended that deadline and trains have kept speeding into preventable disasters, including the Amtrak derailment that killed three people in Western Washington on Monday.

In Amtrak’s case, this is a recurring nightmare. The crash this week was eerily reminiscent of one just two years ago in Philadelphia, where an Amtrak train barreled into a sweeping curve at 106 miles an hour before jumping the tracks and rolling over. Eight people died.

That crash, too, could have been prevented by the technology, known as positive train control. But five months after it happened, Congress gave railroads at least three more years to install it.

“Here we are, almost 10 years later, and that deadline came and went,” said Kitty Higgins, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board. “The railroads have been slow-walking it and it still is not implemented. It’s absolutely outrageous.”

Railroads have cited the cost and complexity of adding the technology, which relies on satellites and radio signals to prevent trains from running out of control if an engineer has lost focus or fallen asleep while driving. Industry estimates of the total cost of installation exceed $10 billion. . .

“It is complicated, but the railroads have been at this for a very long time,” said Ms. Higgins, who was the safety board’s lead representative at the scene of the California crash. “We put a man on the moon 50 years ago faster than we’ve been able to implement positive train control. I mean, come on.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/us/amtrak-train-safety.html?

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Only 10 billion? Take it out of the Pentagon budget and no one will notice. Or...

take back certain tax breaks.

[Thunderbeast]

3. Could probably find $10 Billion

in the swizzle stick budget for military Officers's Clubs.

[dchill]

2. We are on a staggering backslide from anything like...

any kind of safety controls. Is that news to anyone? Responsibility is a real drag on the market.

[pansypoo53219]

4. the gop wants to make us a 3rd world country. just keep repeating #1!

[quartz007]

5. How to control a speeding driver?

Automatic speed control at turns would help,
but not if the driver is hell bent on speeding,
using manual over-rides. Besides, all electronics
can fail at any time. Which is why everyone should
back up data stored on computer regularly.

NTSB is investigating this accident, and when they
conclude train was going twice as fast as it should,
it is human failure, and there is no excuse for it.

Trains have been operating in this country for what
over 100 years? I can't recall accidents related to
speeding at double the allowed speed in the 1960's,
1970's and 1980's. May be the culture has changed?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. Trains have been passing signals at red ever since there were signals.

Will 1918 do?

Hammond Circus Train Wreck

The Hammond Circus Train Wreck occurred on June 22, 1918 during World War 1 and was one of the worst train wrecks in US history. Eighty-six people were reported to have died and another 127 were injured when a locomotive engineer fell asleep and ran his train into the rear of another near Hammond, Indiana.

Circus train wreck

In the early morning hours of June 22, 1918, Alonzo Sargent was at the throttle of a Michigan Central Railroad troop train pulled by K80r pacific 8485 with 20 empty Pullman cars. He was aware that his train was closely following a slower circus train. Sargent, an experienced man at the throttle, had slept little if at all in the preceding 24 hours. The effects of a lack of sleep, several heavy meals, some kidney pills, and the gentle rolling of his locomotive are thought to have caused him to fall asleep at the controls.

At approximately 4 a.m., he missed at least two automatic signals and warnings posted by a brakeman of the 26-car circus train, which had made an emergency stop to check a hot box on one of the flatcars. The second train plowed into the caboose and four rear wooden sleeping cars of the circus train at a rail crossing known as Ivanhoe Interlocking (5 1⁄2 miles (8.9 km) east of Hammond, Indiana) at an estimated speed of 35 miles per hour (56 km/h).

The circus train held 400 performers and roustabouts of the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus. Most of the 86 who were killed in the train wreck perished in the first 35 seconds after the collision. Then, the wreckage caught on fire. Among the dead were Arthur Dierckx and Max Nietzborn of the Great Dierckx Brothers, a strongman act, and Jennie Ward Todd of The Flying Wards. There were also 127 injuries.

[quartz007]

7. that is different from SPEEDING at double posted speed?

I did not mean to imply there were no accidents in old days. There have been train derailments since trains began. The point is speeding at higher speeds seems to be a recent phenomenon. I recall another such recent accident due to speeding along a severe turn.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. Wreck of the northbound Crescent, 1978 or 1979, Elma, Virginia? NT

December 1978, and Elma, not Elna:

80 mph Recorded on Curve Before Train Wreck

By Karlyn Barker and Ted Gup December 5, 1978

The luxury Southern Railway train that derailed in rural Virginia Sunday killing six persons and injuring some 60 others was traveling at 80 miles an hour going into a curve where the maximum speed limit is 45, federal safety inspectors at the crash site said yesterday.

At that speed, according to several authorities who examined speed recording tapes taken from two of the train's four engines, the Washington-bound Southern Crescent was going 35 miles over the posted legal limit when it jumped its tracks while heading into a downhill curve with a 5-degree bank. ... "Anything over 45 mph is an unsafe speed" for that section of track, said Francis McAdams, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board who went to the scene of the crash yesterday near Elma, Va., about 35 miles south of Charlottesville.
....

Virginia State Police yesterday released the identity of the sixth victim of the crash, Ethel Schuler, of Spartanburg, S.C., whose body was pinned under the wreck at the bottom of the gully until late Sunday evening. ... Also identified as having been killed in the crash were Southern Crescent flagman Howard L. Jackson of Alexandria; Lewis Price of Atlanta, a cook; Jackson and Edith Hume, an elderly couple from Madison Heights, Va., and 14 year-old Edward F. Shaw of Wilmington, Del.
....

In terms of lives lost, railroad officials said the crash was the worst in Virginia since 1903, when Southern's "Old 97" derailed at Danville, killing nine persons. That accident is depicted in a wellknown ballads "The Wreck of the Old 97."

The wreck of 97 was a case of a train entering a curve at excessive speed.