Apparently no lessons are to be learned from tests or failures by folks like you? Seems like a lot of attitude from someone who appears to know very little about how and why railroad safety testing is done?

I was tested a number of times in my operating career as an Engineer and I passed them all. Maybe, I was actually more alert and/or better trained, or maybe just plain lucky? Many others didn't pass every test every time they were tested, but most of those folks did appear to have learned from it, and didn't repeat those mistakes. It's a useless tool for those without a learning curve, though?

The fact that testing was done and there were failures is why testing is done. The goal is zero failures. It is to assure compliance with the rules and determine areas that need improvement in training or supervision that testing is done. It's not just done just to create simplistic headlines for the uninformed.

In this ideal perfect world of human events, there are or can never be any errors, so testing which shows failures shouldn't be conducted, right? After all it might lead to bad publicity? And, isn't bad publicity more important than safety? At least for politicians?

There are serious consequences for test failures, up to and including suspension, or termination of employee's who have repeated failures. Testing, supervision, and proper response to safety complaints should have removed and/or retrained Sanchez before his rules failures and bad habits became catastrophic. This was not done adequately in the run up to Chatsworth. It appears that even those turned in for serious rules violations, like Sanchez, weren't apparently subject to much reporting, supervision, or testing under the contractor. Proper testing is one proven tool which instills a corporate culture of safety and respect for the rules in the railroad industry.

The fact that tests are now being regularly conducted by Metrolink, that failures are subject to reporting, and employee's subject to better training, supervision, and discipline, is a major step forward.