Assuming his attorney suggested he lie about what he saw is a pretty damning outlook. You seem to take special pride in slamming people you don't know in unfortunate situations. I've never wrecked a train yet; I pray it never happens. But if it ever does and I'm left alive to talk about it, I hope I'll probably be like my brothers who collided with a Metrolink train at Atwood a number of years ago. They said they were talking and lost situational awareness. I can't think of any reason why they'd be honest, except that maybe they understood they pain and death that happened. Personally, I wish they'd said something closer to the truth: They were exhausted, having turned and burned all week, went on duty in the early morning hours and it took more than five hours for the company to finally get them to Atwood, less than 40 miles from Hobart. Staring into the early morning sun when you're exhausted is a sure way to DOZE OFF and get through a block.

Observe and Call signals only requires the call-out if the signal is more restrictive than clear. The Engineer calls the Conductor in this situation, not the other way around, because the Engineer is the typically the only one who can see it in this operational setting.

A false clear isn't necessarily something than can be duplictated in an inspector's test simply due to the obvious fact that should the system design allow for an intentional false clear to begin with, it would have surfaced during installation pre-checks. We have to place our lives as an industrial society into the hands of electronics. Yet, how many times has a computer 'crashed' for no apparent reason? How many times has our Check Engine light come on, yet the mechanic finds nothing wrong? And what of the two foamers and the security guard who saw the clear block? Did they recant? I don't know if they did or not, but it seems rather compelling if four different people saw a clear block.

I stand by my words as an operating craft employee and someone who isn't dragging some dead guy's name in the mud just because we don't necessarily think he's 'our kind of guy'.