Natter on as much as you want. My point is that the whole Sanchez incident and similar things are a result of the touchy-feely HR process, which makes it a Herculean task to weed out the bad eggs. I know of one freight engineer who had three red signal violations in four years, at least one of which was a reverse of what happened at Chatsworth: he got by a red controlled signal and almost ran head on into a passenger train. The reason he was still running trains at the time was that he kept playing the diversity card.

There's also the failure of the education business (colleges and universities of all kinds) to teach managers in the humanities, focusing rather on bottom line bottom line bottom line and other pat formulae. It's also a product of the top-down, broker-safety-as-a-commodity mentality which has been rife in the RR industry for the last 40-50+ years. Safety programs used to be a true labor-management collaboration; since about 1960-1970, they're haven't been. We can go on to contemplate the overbearing, statistic-driven FRA and NTSB, but the necessary employee good attitudes toward safety and self-respect aren't quantifiable. Then there are the totally irresponsible politicians with their penchants for utterly uninformed grandstanding and sound bytes.

This means that installing cameras is a cop-out, a defection of attention from the real problem: the systematic failure of management to comprehend what they're overseeing and be real people managers.

Cameras are passive not active. There will be plenty of after-the-fact evidence. In order for them actually to prevent and accident, which is the central theme of the hype we've been subject to over the last year or two, a separate person has to be watching the video feed from every single camera in real time every single second the train is in motion. It would be more profitable in the long run to put a second engineer in each cab because it would promote the passing on of good work ethics, which cameras don't. Ever hear of the term "featherbedding"? It goes back to 1922.

If I have to have Big Brother looking over my shoulder because I might cause injury and death to others while operating my locomotive, there is no reason truckers, airline pilots, nor you the automobile driver on the freeways shouldn't be subjected to the same picayune scrutiny. After all, you the automobile driver has a far worse safety record than all the railroads put together. What singles you out for special treatment? Oh, never mind, you just don't want that camera looking over your shoulder. Double standard if there ever was one.

And no, the black boxes for automobiles isn't an urban legend, I read about it in a few newspapers and trade publications a while back. It's quite a debate, and the phase in date I recall is currently proposed for new cars beginning 2015. Think about it. If you speed and a cop doesn't pull you over, you will get away with it until something later on triggers a fishing expedition in your event recorder. Federal creeping mommyism. Don'tcha just love it? We fought the cold war (and won) in order to have Soviet-style intrusion into everyone's daily lives here in the good ol' USofA?