Bob,

The bad part in all of this is the misinterpretation by Amtrak, freight railroads and the media dis-informing John Q. Public, same with Piss poor lack of railroading head honchos at the STB and FRA nowadays...

A good safety culture, proper training and NOT weaponizing PTC as a substitute for OTJ Training and as usiing it as a Nanny for the human error is fatal.

PTC is a tool, not a substitute. Blaming Talgo and PTC is NOT the root cause of the accident here.

Perhaps FRA should pay more attention on Amtrak's safety culture and morale. Goobers like Anderson, Gardner and Co. don't help matters, either.



BOB2 Wrote:
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> It's an interesting article. It goes back to the
> fundamental problem we have in America of making
> poor investments in safety. This equipment was
> not the cause of the accident. Nor is there much
> "evidence" that suggests these lives would not
> have been lost, and/or sustain life threatening
> injuries, in a similar collision using compliant
> equipment.
>
> Rotem "safety" cars, which turned out not to be so
> safe, if the drawbar broke away, in what should
> have been a relatively minor collision with a
> light duty truck and light farm trailer, which
> spun the car at 5 G's and killed the engineer, and
> yet, were not "banned", with far more reason from
> what we know from that incident in Oxnard to do
> so. And, until these were "fixed" ML had to put
> point units back on their trains.
>
> Poor training, poor oversight, poor management,
> and one piss poor hoghead, who failed in a number
> of aspects to properly handle the train or call
> relevant signals, and the failure of those
> training to pay attention and correct his failure
> to respond to the upcoming speed restriction on
> the curve, which is what caused the accident with
> the Talgos. And, yes, in perfect "hindsight"
> waiting three months to have the PTC working
> properly would have prevented even this guy from
> screwing up this badly... Which is yet another
> pretty piss poor excuse for this guys piss poor
> performance, motivation, and training....
>
> Oh well, "My Bad", now let's find someone else to
> "blame"...in our "brave new world", where we hold
> everyone harmless for any of their personal
> failures, lest we might hold the "responsible" for
> their actions, which might damage their unearned
> self esteem... My best professional opinion is
> that this hoghead is and was an embarrassment to
> everyone of you on AP who ran an engine safely in
> your career.
>
> The issue with the car was a minor contributory
> factor in the resulting damage, or resultant
> deaths and injury, not a primary cause, given the
> crash speeds. And, that it was the part of the
> waiver on securing of car components that was
> involved, was not due to an inherent car flaw, but
> attributable to yet another "institutional"
> failure to follow up on proper oversight, and
> compliance testing for proper strength of those
> components used to comply with the waiver, which
> has nothing to do with the compression standards
> issues.
>
> But, apparently by golly, the NTSB is going make
> you all "safer", by issuing a finding blaming the
> car maker, in spite of the chain of clear
> individual human failure, multiple institutional
> failures, and a lack of oversight, even up to and
> including the FRA itself, for not doing and/or
> requiring more inspection, of the compliance on
> the very waiver modifications, the NTSB cited, as
> the issue with the cars.