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Re: Synopsis from NTSB
Author: OldPoleBurner
Date: 06-20-2013 - 14:51
> More and more, their reports show poor logic and
> an elementary understanding of railroad operations.
And a decidedly political bias, along with a massive corporate favoritism, hence the constant drumbeat for PTC. Which so far has benefited certain railroad suppliers to the tune of multi-billions of dollars and provided no benefit whatsoever to those forced to purchase the pig in a poke that is PTC. Worse yet, those billions have been diverted from capital programs with very real, demonstrable and proven safety benefits.
And as others have opined here, technologies already proven to reliably enforce compliance with signal indications, are already in use worldwide. But were shoved aside for a politically favored piece of garbage. Even the lowly ATS system, or ordinary ACS (cab signals only), would make it nearly impossible to unknowingly pass a restricted signal -- and in the case of ACS, to forget that one is under a restrictive indication, as it is continuously displayed right in front of the engineer's nose.
Simply add on-board speed enforcement and supervised braking to ACS, and you have all that PTC will ever have to offer for safety. So why the demand for a futuristic pie in the sky solution, when a real one already existed? Simple! Greed, political power, graft, and favoritism, by those in power since the early nineties.
The problem they really solved? Simply, again! Certain railroad supply vendors with large lobbying budgets curried favor, in order to force unwilling buyers to purchase what couldn't be sold on the free market. A tactic we have seen used widely of late, affecting virtually every aspect of our lives. It ain't just the railroads who have suffered by being forced to buy something they didn't want and wouldn't work for them.
And why didn't the railroads what PTC? Well they did want to explore improvements and had conducted numerous experiments over the last few decades, but none so far have achieved anywhere near the fail-safety of what they already had. In fact, all technologies tested so far have very serious and dangerous failure modes; failure types that simply are not even possible with existing signal gear.
They were only purchasing experimental quantities of PTC stuff, but not actually using it in service; simply because it just will not do, to merely replace human error with even more hazardous machine errors. The goal of signal engineers doing this experimentation, is and always was, to prevent any dangerous mistake from causing an accident. And PTC as currently being supplied, will never accomplish that.
Indeed, after hundreds of hours of my own professional experience "wasted" in this cause, I was presented with the stark realities, by none other than the inventor of the underlying technology, and in whose name the patents were granted. He directly stated that the military was able to use the technology, as some losses in military field operations are tolerable, and expected. But in a civilian safety application, no such hazardous errors could be tolerated - period.
This was his explanation for why the aerospace company he worked for, had just refused to safety certify the technology for our use in railroad signaling. It is painfully apparent certain railroad suppliers, Congress, and the NTSB; are not so honest, and not really very concerned about public safety - at all!. --- So, now that we can plainly see evidence of the NTSB's bias; it is not so surprising to note that there is virtually no factual or scientific bases for any of the NTSB's assertions in this case; yet they made them anyway.
Their 1st assertion - That this accident would have been prevented by PTC - is false because there is no scientific evidence whatever, that the underlying technology is any less prone to hazardous errors, than are human beings. In fact, there is much evidence to the contrary.
Their 2nd assertion - That this accident was caused because the engineer could not accurately read the signals due to vision problems is not supported by any presented facts. INDEED - "Inspectors recovered no recordings of crew communications and couldn't perform autopsies on those who died." Where then is the factual evidence to back up their assertion. They have not a fact nor even a clue as to what was going on in that cab prior to the accident! For all the NTSB knows, they were playing gin-rummy on the floor of the cab. The only reason we know they were even in the cab, is because that is where their bodies were found after the wreck.
The assertion is based only upon the coincident existence of some medical eye problem, which are only vaguely described. Besides a suggestion of color blindness of some sort, cataracts and glaucoma were mentioned. Not that he been officially diagnosed with anything, but that he had complained over and over about them.
Wikipedia has this on cataracts - "Those with cataract commonly experience difficulty appreciating colors and changes in contrast, driving, reading, recognizing faces, and experience problems coping with glare from bright lights." Buts those cataracts can be fixed, with the man returning to work after recovering from surgery, if indeed that was his problem. Wiki had no mention of color blindness in glaucoma patients. It also stated that almost all color blindness was congenital (from birth or soon after). It did mention a relatively small chance of "Acquired Color Blindness" due to brain damage of certain sorts.
However, in this case, the signal indications could still have been discerned, aside from color. A review of google street view plainly shows that the end of siding signals were in fact standard hooded UP color-light signals, at least since 2008 when the nearby grade crossing was last photographed. Now I would suppose it may be hard in the early dawn hours to see which lens is lit in the distance, but certainly easier when right next to it. You would think that, knowing he had color acuity problems, he would have proceeded only if he had determined the correct aspect of all the signals. Instead he just kept on truckin' - no attempt to dump the brakes!
How he could have been so wrong on all the signals, each with a different appearance and successively more restrictive aspect - is beyond me. This assertion by the NTSB is specious and without scientific foundation! As are almost all of their assertion of late -it seems.
What the available evidence does suggest is that every occupant in the cab was not conscious - either asleep, hypnogogic, or already dead. And lest anyone assert that any train or engineman would deliberately fall asleep; know this - the ridiculous irregular work schedule imposed upon railroaders, is well known to disrupt circadian rhythm, producing a loss of productivity, serious and dangerous human error, hypnogogic hallucination, and involuntary sleep; even while the eyes remain open wide!
And all of that is a DAMN SHAME. We need brutally honest analysis of railroad accidents, because if we don't have it, people will continue to die - needlessly!
All in the name of political power, greed, corporate favoritism by government, and bald face cover-ups of the truth - again, by government itself!
OPB
> an elementary understanding of railroad operations.
And a decidedly political bias, along with a massive corporate favoritism, hence the constant drumbeat for PTC. Which so far has benefited certain railroad suppliers to the tune of multi-billions of dollars and provided no benefit whatsoever to those forced to purchase the pig in a poke that is PTC. Worse yet, those billions have been diverted from capital programs with very real, demonstrable and proven safety benefits.
And as others have opined here, technologies already proven to reliably enforce compliance with signal indications, are already in use worldwide. But were shoved aside for a politically favored piece of garbage. Even the lowly ATS system, or ordinary ACS (cab signals only), would make it nearly impossible to unknowingly pass a restricted signal -- and in the case of ACS, to forget that one is under a restrictive indication, as it is continuously displayed right in front of the engineer's nose.
Simply add on-board speed enforcement and supervised braking to ACS, and you have all that PTC will ever have to offer for safety. So why the demand for a futuristic pie in the sky solution, when a real one already existed? Simple! Greed, political power, graft, and favoritism, by those in power since the early nineties.
The problem they really solved? Simply, again! Certain railroad supply vendors with large lobbying budgets curried favor, in order to force unwilling buyers to purchase what couldn't be sold on the free market. A tactic we have seen used widely of late, affecting virtually every aspect of our lives. It ain't just the railroads who have suffered by being forced to buy something they didn't want and wouldn't work for them.
And why didn't the railroads what PTC? Well they did want to explore improvements and had conducted numerous experiments over the last few decades, but none so far have achieved anywhere near the fail-safety of what they already had. In fact, all technologies tested so far have very serious and dangerous failure modes; failure types that simply are not even possible with existing signal gear.
They were only purchasing experimental quantities of PTC stuff, but not actually using it in service; simply because it just will not do, to merely replace human error with even more hazardous machine errors. The goal of signal engineers doing this experimentation, is and always was, to prevent any dangerous mistake from causing an accident. And PTC as currently being supplied, will never accomplish that.
Indeed, after hundreds of hours of my own professional experience "wasted" in this cause, I was presented with the stark realities, by none other than the inventor of the underlying technology, and in whose name the patents were granted. He directly stated that the military was able to use the technology, as some losses in military field operations are tolerable, and expected. But in a civilian safety application, no such hazardous errors could be tolerated - period.
This was his explanation for why the aerospace company he worked for, had just refused to safety certify the technology for our use in railroad signaling. It is painfully apparent certain railroad suppliers, Congress, and the NTSB; are not so honest, and not really very concerned about public safety - at all!. --- So, now that we can plainly see evidence of the NTSB's bias; it is not so surprising to note that there is virtually no factual or scientific bases for any of the NTSB's assertions in this case; yet they made them anyway.
Their 1st assertion - That this accident would have been prevented by PTC - is false because there is no scientific evidence whatever, that the underlying technology is any less prone to hazardous errors, than are human beings. In fact, there is much evidence to the contrary.
Their 2nd assertion - That this accident was caused because the engineer could not accurately read the signals due to vision problems is not supported by any presented facts. INDEED - "Inspectors recovered no recordings of crew communications and couldn't perform autopsies on those who died." Where then is the factual evidence to back up their assertion. They have not a fact nor even a clue as to what was going on in that cab prior to the accident! For all the NTSB knows, they were playing gin-rummy on the floor of the cab. The only reason we know they were even in the cab, is because that is where their bodies were found after the wreck.
The assertion is based only upon the coincident existence of some medical eye problem, which are only vaguely described. Besides a suggestion of color blindness of some sort, cataracts and glaucoma were mentioned. Not that he been officially diagnosed with anything, but that he had complained over and over about them.
Wikipedia has this on cataracts - "Those with cataract commonly experience difficulty appreciating colors and changes in contrast, driving, reading, recognizing faces, and experience problems coping with glare from bright lights." Buts those cataracts can be fixed, with the man returning to work after recovering from surgery, if indeed that was his problem. Wiki had no mention of color blindness in glaucoma patients. It also stated that almost all color blindness was congenital (from birth or soon after). It did mention a relatively small chance of "Acquired Color Blindness" due to brain damage of certain sorts.
However, in this case, the signal indications could still have been discerned, aside from color. A review of google street view plainly shows that the end of siding signals were in fact standard hooded UP color-light signals, at least since 2008 when the nearby grade crossing was last photographed. Now I would suppose it may be hard in the early dawn hours to see which lens is lit in the distance, but certainly easier when right next to it. You would think that, knowing he had color acuity problems, he would have proceeded only if he had determined the correct aspect of all the signals. Instead he just kept on truckin' - no attempt to dump the brakes!
How he could have been so wrong on all the signals, each with a different appearance and successively more restrictive aspect - is beyond me. This assertion by the NTSB is specious and without scientific foundation! As are almost all of their assertion of late -it seems.
What the available evidence does suggest is that every occupant in the cab was not conscious - either asleep, hypnogogic, or already dead. And lest anyone assert that any train or engineman would deliberately fall asleep; know this - the ridiculous irregular work schedule imposed upon railroaders, is well known to disrupt circadian rhythm, producing a loss of productivity, serious and dangerous human error, hypnogogic hallucination, and involuntary sleep; even while the eyes remain open wide!
And all of that is a DAMN SHAME. We need brutally honest analysis of railroad accidents, because if we don't have it, people will continue to die - needlessly!
All in the name of political power, greed, corporate favoritism by government, and bald face cover-ups of the truth - again, by government itself!
OPB
