Re: NTSB report on Miami-Dade Airport "People Mover" crash
Author: OldPoleBurner
Date: 12-29-2011 - 14:49
> Unfortuately this kind of thing goes on far too often in the railroad business and
> I'm sure in other safety related industry.
> While no fan of government bureaucracies I do think the state and federal government
> need to step up oversight. The next accident may not be just a handful of injuries.
Even if it happened just once, it would be "far too often in the railroad business"!
As absolutely any railroad signal maintainer or signal engineer worthy of his job, knows full well; there is in fact absolutely NO EXCUSE whatsoever for this kind of shoddy work in safety critical systems. No jumper, change, or alteration of any safety critical circuit, should ever be done without first verifying all possible consequences. And if you don't know how to do that, or don't even know you should do it; then you AIN'T QUALIFIED to work on safety critical systems!
Honest mistakes can happen, but this is NOT an honest mistake! It is gross negligence performed by unqualified workers supervised by unqualified managers.
And yes, while oversight by an independent government agency such as the FRA is important; still, the most important IS a work ethic that fully accounts for all requisites of safety critical work. This ethic would be needed at all levels, including in the oversight agency itself. But many state oversight agencies (including the California PUC), lack that ethic or have simply employed too many unqualified people to effectively oversee anybody. Fortunately though, Congress is moving in the direction of unifying all rail/fixed-guideway oversight to the FRA, which does know what it is doing.
Finally, as I've repeatedly asserted on this forum, accidental death and injury, are still accidental death and injury, even when it happens in an automated system, or even under PTS - as it will as currently constituted.
It does no good whatever, to merely replace human errors on the part of trainmen and engineers; with machine errors caused by faulty machinery, or by serious lack of qualifications or work ethic on the part of maintenance and engineering types. And both the companies involved here (or their predecessors), are well known in the industry to have both these problems! If you insist on being their customer - look out!
OPB