Philadelphia Amtrak train derailment

[boomerang]

Right? Let's string him up already. That 5th Amendment thing is so 17th century, he's hiding something.

You're reading waaay too much into my post. I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I can't, because very few facts are known. I'm just thinking out loud about the possibilities.

 

[Markbnj]

Extremely sad:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32740319

All confirmed deaths seem to be people very successful people with a great career and/or future career. To make it worse, 4/6 of them have children. Why does this always happen? It's never any known pedophiles, rapists or murderers. Of course it's the senior VP at Wells Fargo instead. It never fails.... so sad.

How many rapists, pedobears, and serial killers do you expect to be in a fairly random sample of the rail-riding public?

 

[brianmanahan]

How many rapists, pedobears, and serial killers do you expect to be in a fairly random sample of the rail-riding public?

1 out of every 2 people

 

[cabri]

1 out of every 2 people

typical idiotic remarks from you

 

[brianmanahan]

typical idiotic remarks from you

typical inability to assume bazinga from you

 

[radhak]

This suddenly became very personal for me - my wife read the name of a very close friend as among those listed dead. Till now I was thinking 'out of 240 odd, only 7 died'. Now that 7 seems such a large number.

I am too shaken up to bring myself to reach out to his wife right now. His son and my daughter were classmates in elementary, since pre-school; I can't believe what the boy or his sister must be going thru. Losing a loved father while in high/middle school is bad enough; having that play out in public, and the images and videos broadcast incessantly must be unbearable.

What a brilliant man - in his job (in video technology), and personally. He and his wife taught us by example how to be calmer and kinder with each other and with our kids. Of all my acquaintances, he must stand foremost in the 'nicest person' list. I remember when we were on a long vacation outside the country and my wife returned early with the kids, I asked Jim to received them at the airport. He did that, and more - they also stocked our refrigerator with food to last the next two days, so my jet-lagged wife would not have to go grocery shopping. That very concept amazed us.

Just this one life lost makes the world a poorer place. Presuming the others dead were just as impactful in their lives, this accident is very tragic indeed.

 

[Kaido]

This suddenly became very personal for me - my wife read the name of a very close friend as among those listed dead. Till now I was thinking 'out of 240 odd, only 7 died'. Now that 7 seems such a large number.

I am too shaken up to bring myself to reach out to his wife right now. His son and my daughter were classmates in elementary, since pre-school; I can't believe what the boy or his sister must be going thru. Losing a loved father while in high/middle school is bad enough; having that play out in public, and the images and videos broadcast incessantly must be unbearable.

What a brilliant man - in his job (in video technology), and personally. He and his wife taught us by example how to be calmer and kinder with each other and with our kids. Of all my acquaintances, he must stand foremost in the 'nicest person' list. I remember when we were on a long vacation outside the country and my wife returned early with the kids, I asked Jim to received them at the airport. He did that, and more - they also stocked our refrigerator with food to last the next two days, so my jet-lagged wife would not have to go grocery shopping. That very concept amazed us.

Just this one life lost makes the world a poorer place. Presuming the others dead were just as impactful in their lives, this accident is very tragic indeed.

Bummer dude, sorry to hear that

 

[Kaido]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/amtrak-crash-train-engineer-agrees-speak-probers-sped/story?id=31042574

Unclear whether the train increased speed manually or not:

Sumwalt said video from inside the cabin shows that 65 seconds before the crash, the train’s speed went above 70 mph. Just 16 seconds before the end of the recording, the train’s speed went above 100 mph, Sumwalt added.

Bostian, 32, of Queens, New York, was “very distraught” to learn that the crash killed passengers in the crash, his attorney, Robert Goggin, told ABC News. He added that Bostian voluntarily turned over a blood sample and his cell phone and is cooperating with authorities.

"I asked him if he had any medical issues,” Goggin said. “He said he had none. He's on no medications. ... He has no health issues to speak of and just has no explanation.”

Says he can't remember, no health issues, gave a blood sample, not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, gave up his cell phone, did a short interview with authorities, etc. Per his attorney:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/14/us/philadelphia-amtrak-train-derailment/index.html

Goggin insisted his client hadn't been talking or texting on his phone before he made the 911 call. Nor did he have other notable accidents or mishaps. And his lawyer said Bostian voluntarily took a blood test and there was "no drinking, no drugs, no medical conditions. Nothing."

System glitch? Horsing around? Death wish? Misjudged the area? Fell asleep on the job? Amtrak's website says their trains go up to 150mph, and more than 50% operate at speeds over 100mph, so it's not unusual to be going 106mph. What is unusual is (1) the train sped up before hitting the 50mph curve, and then (2) it slowed down to 80mph before hitting the curve. Do they only have one operator driving the entire train?

 

[CraKaJaX]

How many rapists, pedobears, and serial killers do you expect to be in a fairly random sample of the rail-riding public?

I'm not saying this accident, but more in general. The good guys are the ones that always get the shaft. Always.

 

[who?]

I wonder if somebody hacked the control system or if it was confused by SCADA signals from the power company embedded in the electricity.

 

[CraKaJaX]

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/05/14/pittsburgh-train-derailment/27296877/

 

[MongGrel]

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/05/14/pittsburgh-train-derailment/27296877/

Heh.

That infrastructure thing seems to be going to hell all over.

 

[lupi]

How convenient. The engineer has no memory of the crash or what led up to it. At least that's according to his attorney, which he was lucid enough, apparently, to hire. :hmm:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/transient-global-amnesia/basics/symptoms/con-20032746

 

[RampantAndroid]

How convenient. The engineer has no memory of the crash or what led up to it. At least that's according to his attorney, which he was lucid enough, apparently, to hire. :hmm:

Amtrak's engineers are unionized iirc, meaning the union gave him an attorney - NOT the he hired one.

 

[bradley]

Wouldn't be surprised if the engineer is currently taking a statin drug like Lipitor, of which A) has been known to cause transient global amnesia B) a wide majority of the population is currently being prescribed.

http://www.spacedoc.com/lipitor_tga.htm

 

[Markbnj]

Wouldn't be surprised if the engineer is currently taking a statin drug like Lipitor, of which A) has been known to cause transient global amnesia B) a wide majority of the population is currently being prescribed.

http://www.spacedoc.com/lipitor_tga.htm

Maybe he just fell asleep. In a forum post on a railroad site (sorry I don't have a link) he wrote about the dangers of long hours and what could happen if an engineer fell asleep. I always thought there was a deadman's switch that would stop the train if that happened, but perhaps not.

What strikes me, given the several significant rail accidents over the last couple of years, is how the humans are just about always the fallible part of the system. You have a guy up in a cab with his hand on a throttle and he has to look out the window and see the color of a light, or read a little yellow sign, to know what he should make the train do. Trains would seem to be an excellent case for automation, with their constrained movement and well-behaved physics. Have a computer driving the thing and getting a constant feed of the locations of other trains on the line, their speed, etc. Have a central system do the planning and routing while the local system deals with safe operation and handling any unplanned hazards or failures. Compared to machines us meatsacks make crappy operators.

 

[kranky]

Positive Train Control systems can limit the speed and can pre-emptively stop trains, but you still need an engineer. A vehicle can be stuck on a railroad crossing and no system can detect that - the engineer has to pull the emergency brake.

The only type of system where you can safely operate trains without a human is a transit system that has no intersections with the outside world. Stop at station, open/close doors, go to next station, rinse, repeat.

 

[CraKaJaX]

Heh.

That infrastructure thing seems to be going to hell all over.

It absolutely is... It's centuries old. But you won't hear much about this wreck because of the one in Philly and there were also no deaths. Hush Hush - No one saw a thing! I've lost track of how many trains have derailed so far this year.

 

[Phoenix86]

Positive Train Control systems can limit the speed and can pre-emptively stop trains, but you still need an engineer. A vehicle can be stuck on a railroad crossing and no system can detect that - the engineer has to pull the emergency brake.

The only type of system where you can safely operate trains without a human is a transit system that has no intersections with the outside world. Stop at station, open/close doors, go to next station, rinse, repeat.

We're automating cars on a road with other moving objects that aren't automated right next to you. It'd be simple by comparison to automate trains with known paths/speeds.

Pretty much the only major hurdle would be the one thing you listed, foreign objects on the rail and that's not too difficult to handle with the same tech used on cars today.

 

[Markbnj]

We're automating cars on a road with other moving objects that aren't automated right next to you. It'd be simple by comparison to automate trains with known paths/speeds.

Pretty much the only major hurdle would be the one thing you listed, foreign objects on the rail and that's not too difficult to handle with the same tech used on cars today.

The thing about foreign objects on the track, or damage to track, is that there is damn little the engineer can do anyway. Whatever little there is to be done, i.e. detect the situation and apply the brakes as early as possible, a machine can do better and earlier than a human.

 

[Phoenix86]

The thing about foreign objects on the track, or damage to track, is that there is damn little the engineer can do anyway. Whatever little there is to be done, i.e. detect the situation and apply the brakes as early as possible, a machine can do better and earlier than a human.

Exactly, and there's WAY less to monitor from a reactive system standpoint, which is basically what an engineer does today. You really only need to monitor the front/back PoV of the train. Rear view systems in cars basically do this right now. Beef up that tech just a little and aim it at the tracks. Yeah, it's not that simple, but not that that much harder either.

Crossings could be automated in the same way. Sensors automatically slow down/stop incoming trains if a vehicle is on the tracks while the gates/signals are going.

Rail tech is still operating in the 90s.

 

[z1ggy]

It absolutely is... It's centuries old. But you won't hear much about this wreck because of the one in Philly and there were also no deaths. Hush Hush - No one saw a thing! I've lost track of how many trains have derailed so far this year.

Yeah I was reading and apparently it's more "common" than people think. I thought I saw there was 36 Amtrak derailments since 2006? I hope it's 36 total, but for some reason I thought I remember feeling shocked, and thinking it was 36 average per year, since 2006.

Either way, it's still probably orders of magnitude more safe than traveling in a car (statistically).

 

[Ruptga]

Rail tech is still operating in the 90s.

Most of the politicians responsible for regulating/mandating this stuff are from the 50s and 60s, so what do you really expect?

 

[kranky]

When the government wants better airline control systems and new airports, the government pays for it. When they want safer roads, the government pays for construction and improvements. When they want changes in railroad safety, they just order the railroads to pay for it. The law to implement Positive Train Control was passed before the technology had even been developed - and it has to work seamlessly on all systems. So when 4 railroads share use of a section of track, that track's PTC system has to work with all 4 railroads' systems. And those railroads' systems have to work everywhere those trains go (and shared usage of track is very common).

The railroads kind of get a raw deal in that the government doesn't pay for their infrastructure like they do for airlines and truckers. Changing systems like this is a pretty big deal - design, construction, installation, testing, maintenance, retraining thousands of workers, losing millions of dollars of inventory of now-useless spare parts for the systems getting replaced, etc.

 

[Phoenix86]

You missed a couple details. Amtrak is owned by the gov't so they are even more on the line for the infrastructure.

Amtrak has it's own version of PTC. WTF, the government arm of the rail doesn't even use the same standard passed by congress?

Republicans in congress are proposing to REDUCE the budget to "help". The general idea is to push it towards privitaization but if you don't have that full plan in place simply reducing funding isn't the right move... Increasing it is. Oh, but they bitch about how the money isn't being spent effectively. If only they had budgetary oversight, oh wait, they DO!