>I once did get 30 dummies because I told a certain official were to put it, when he wanted me to take out an unsafe consist with an air problem, so every time we'd have used the air, we have tied up the whole railroad.

If you got "dummies" for this, then it's your own fault. There are ways to correct these sorts of abusive situations, without getting demerits. I've had similar experiences with air problems on may occasions and never had the results you describe. It's not a question of being "perfect", as you so grandly allege, but one of being careful and observing the safety rules and regulations, precisely what you've been caterwauling about. If Sanchez had been my fireman and used his cell phone while driving, I would have told him to put it away or thrown it or him off the engine forthwith. BDTD too (although not with Sanchez).

>A prevenable accident cost 25 peoples lives because of poor oversite and lax safety regimes.

This is where you begin to lose track. The mind-set, all to prevalent today among management and their training schools, is that /all/ accidents are caused and therefore preventable. They are not. They are preventable only to a certain point, and then random chance takes over, at which point you have reached the point of diminishing returns on your capital investment in safety equipment. Even signal books of 100 years ago (GRS) speak of the balance between operating economically and investing in safety equipment to the point of stagnation. In other words, you can install and wire signals to be /really, really, really/ safe, but you would then go broke because you couldn't run enough trains in the day to pay off your expenses.

As far as PTC goes, it hasn't proved workable yet.

I don't contest the point of "distracted [train] driving", and I think the driving public should be subject to the same "ordeals" we are (event recorders in their cars, driver cameras, what not). This would certain go a long way toward mitigating the carnage on the LA freeways. It would save a lot more lives yearly than have been lost on Metrolink since its inception. What all of us here on the rr object to is being singled out as villians by a bunch of chicken littles when statistics prove otherwise, the "do as we say not as we do" types.

>As to the cost, well, the lawsuit settlements alone will make PTC and the camera systems look like chump change.

But they won't forestall the lawsuits.

>The increased productivity and reduction in accidents will pay for it.

Proving something didn't happen is impossible, and as such, the world of statistics disregards the concept.

>I don't think this will end "America", as we know it. So, you can leave your wheelbarrow in the garage.

When I was talking about the Weimar Republic, I wasn't thinking in particular about this PTC and camera program but Congress's shoveling money out in big heaps and bundles in this "recovery program" (which so far seems only to have paid off the miscreants--the bankers--who caused the problems to begin with). Add to this the pallets of 100 dollar bills which disappeared from the runways at Baghdad during the Bush years, not to mention the Iraq war itself and its effects on the national debt, and something's going to give somewhere regarding the value of the US dollar. Already my investments have lost 50% of their value. How've yours been doing?