If a Train Driver Goes Way over the Speed Limit and People Die Should there be Charges?

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it looks like this is what happened in todays NYC Metro-North tragedy, and if so this would be the second time this year for this as a known speed demon Spanish driver killed 79 this summer. The Spanish guy was charged but there is a lot of debate about whether this is an appropriate use of the criminal system, about whether it will make it more difficult to detect dangerous drivers as people become unwilling to to talk about the subject.

bonus question: should we take the ability to drive too fast away and install automatic speed limiting devices? this is hella expensive.

my answers: No unless we can prove that the driver goes too fast on purpose and no but all trains should have GPS and HQ should know instantly when trains are going to fast and take action against the drivers. Too many instances should be grounds for termination.

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[+3] - contrex - 12/01/2013There usually are charges if a driver can be shown to have acted recklessly. I don't think you know very much about railroads.

There usually are charges if a driver can be shown to have acted recklessly. I don't think you know very much about railroads.

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@contrex,

Quote:

There usually are charges if a driver can be shown to have acted recklessly.

that is the trend, however that does not mean that it is a good idea.

so you have a non responsive comment and an insult, have you got anything else?

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@hawkeye10,

First the driver/engineer happen to be claiming that the air brakes did not work or work correctly at least and that can indeed happen and I do know about railroads!

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

First the driver/engineer happen to be claiming that the air brakes did not work or work correctly at least and that can indeed happen and I do know about railroads!

It is not likely to extremely unlikely that equipment error is at fault because the system is designed to stop the train in case of failure not fail to stop the train , but the black box will say soon enough. this is an agency with well known long term management and funding problems, the funding problems were extreme even before a certain hurricane made the problem worse, so equipment problems would not shock me. Still, the brake systems are believed to be fail safe, so that would not explain this.

engineer on his cell phone like the spanish guy is far more likely, and i am pretty sure that is a crime now after a metrolink contract engineer killed 25 in 2008 while texting.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

It is not likely to extremely unlikely that equipment error is at fault because the system is designed to stop the train in case of failure not fail to stop the train

LOL off hand I can think of two ways that air brakes on a train can fail in a mode that would not stop the train.

Having air reservoir tanks system was indeed a great safety improvement where the lost of air pressure from the engine is suppose to apply the brakes on the cars but I had seen where it had fail to do so.

By the way most accidents concerning trains and planes and ships are rare due to safety design however the accidents that does happen normally involved more then one element going wrong and at the worst possible time.

So I am not going to pass any judgment that it is a human error until NTSB released it first report in about a month at least.

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@BillRM,

Quote:

LOL off hand I can think of two ways that air brakes on a train can fail in a mode that would not stop the train.

WE WILL know what happened

Quote:

NEW YORK - Investigators have recovered the "event recorder" from a Metro-North train that derailed in New York City early Sunday, a major step toward determining what caused the crash that killed four people and left scores injured.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-ny-train-ntsb-20131201,0,2216777.story#ixzz2mHUxmJ9a

if this turns out to be equipment error and not human error I will buy you a beer. it is not likely.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

f this turns out to be equipment error and not human error I will buy you a beer. it is not likely.

Very good as I know something you seems to had missed in the stories concerning this accident there seems to had been an auto safety backup system on that section of track that was suppose to apply the train brakes if a train is moving too fast for the curve.

So if the brakes was working it seem unlikely that both a computer and a human would have drop the ball.

Now about that beer.............

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@hawkeye10,

Here is an example of how things can go wrong due to no human fault.

There was a mile long freight train one night that broke apart and due to two factors the train let 30 cars sitting on the main line without anybody knowing about it for more then an hour.

First no caboose was available so the train needed to leave the yard with all the crew riding the engine.

Next the nice fail safe air brakes did not engage to stop the train once the train had broken apart due to the air hose having a kink so the air pressure did not drop enough to cause the reserve tanks to engage the brakes on the rest of the cars.

I was manning the yard that night when the crew reported that somewhere and somehow they had lost 30 freight cars that they was support to drop off at.....Sorry it been too many decades I forgot the siding they was suppose to place the missing cars at.

Paul the Train Master was not happy when I woke him up over the matter that I do remember.

Trains brakes do not always work as they are suppose to.

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Accidents and human error happen, but if the driver of a train/bus/truck/plane has made a regular habit of crashing in the past by bad driving, his employers could no doubt be sued on the grounds of negligently endangering public safety by keeping him on instead of sacking him

1 Reply

@Romeo Fabulini,

Quote:

no doubt be sued on the grounds of negligently endangering public safety by keeping him on instead of sacking him

a lot depends on what the employer knows. for instance after the metrolink deaths there were calls to not only criminalize texting while driving but also making it mandatory that the railroads install cameras in the cabs of locomotives and beam the video to headquarters to catch cheaters. my sysco delivery trucks all have gps and in cab video, so I know this could be done. what about going too fast? with gps it is possible to always know exactly how fast a train is going and record this, I am wondering why MN needs to see what the black box says before saying how fast it was going at crash, they should already know. but maybe they dont. maybe they dont want that much information.

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Quote:

The data showed the engineer cut the throttle six seconds before the locomotive came to rest and applied the brakes five seconds before, a move Weener said came "very late in the game."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/02/us/new-york-train-derails/

yep, next we next find out that he was on his cell phone.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

"No one can figure out, really, what happened to the engineer, but he did not brake the train," a source familiar with the investigation told the Wall Street Journal

http://gothamist.com/2013/12/02/metro-north_operator_says_he_dumped.php

potty break?

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

i am going with potty break now, the train hit the curve at 83mph after last second actions so it was going faster before....in a 70 mph zone. I am thinking that the train was going faster than the engineer realized, he thought that he had time to go to the can but got back too late to save the train.

we shall see.

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he was sleeping according to Gothamist. sleeping engineer was a problem that was known and mitigated about 80 years ago with the dead man switch, often a floor switch that must be hit every 10 seconds or on command. it will be interesting to see if this train had one.

edit: if the dead man switch is not kept active the train goes into automatic breaking.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

the train goes into automatic breaking.

This one did... because of lack of braking.

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Quote:

He was rested. His brakes were working. And there was no booze on his breath.

Both William Rockefeller and the Metro-North train he was driving appeared to be in good shape when he reported to work Sunday on the morning of the deadly crash in The Bronx.

“There’s every indication that he would have had time to get full restorative sleep,” Earl Weener of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

As Weener spoke, Rockefeller was being grilled by federal investigators about Sunday’s crash.

Asked about reports that Rockefeller “zoned out” just before the derailment, Weener said, “We don’t know that at this moment.”
Rockefeller was in the second day of a five-day shift and he had been running trains on this route since Nov. 17, so this was not new territory for him, said Weener.

The new NTSB revelations came after The Daily News reported that Rockefeller told cops after the crash, "I was in a daze."

"I don't know what I was thinking about and the next thing I know I was hitting the brakes," Rockefeller said, a law enforcement source told the Daily News.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/metro-north-train-engineer-daydreaming-crash-article-1.1535870

1 Reply

@InfraBlue,

actually if nov 17 was the first time on this run then it was new to him. I wonder if they are checking his blood sugar control. I have heard that diabetics cant get hired as truckers because no one will take the risk, but can they run trains?

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Quote:

An MTA union official informed PIX11 that the dead man’s switch, in this particular diesel train, is located on the floor of the locomotive, not at the controls, and thus would not have detected that the engineer potentially falling asleep at the controls.

Read more: http://pix11.com/2013/12/03/engineer-likely-fell-asleep-at-controls-of-derailed-metro-north-train-sources/#ixzz2mUIyQpjP

this is a push/pull which during this run was in push mode. I am shocked that MN only uses the dead mans switch while in pull mode...50% of the time.

of course this means that he might have actually been in the can.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
An MTA union official informed PIX11 that the dead man’s switch, in this particular diesel train, is located on the floor of the locomotive, not at the controls, and thus would not have detected that the engineer potentially falling asleep at the controls.

Read more: http://pix11.com/2013/12/03/engineer-likely-fell-asleep-at-controls-of-derailed-metro-north-train-sources/#ixzz2mUIyQpjP

this is a push/pull which during this run was in push mode. I am shocked that MN only uses the dead mans switch while in pull mode...50% of the time.

of course this means that he might have actually been in the can.

the New York Times today has a front page story raising this very question. given how cheap this retrofit is I cant Imagine MTA having a good excuse for not having it, thus they will get raked over the coals in court for this misadventure.

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If a Train Driver Goes Way over the Speed Limit and People Die Should there be Charges?

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