Slashdot Mirror
Using GPS To Prevent Train Crashes In India
dave420 writes "The BBC has an article outlining plans in India to use GPS technology to alert train drivers of obstructions on the tracks, automatically stopping the train if the driver fails to take action. This sounds like a good use of cheaply-available technology to provide a safer train network."
I could see where this could come in handy! The last thing ANY Indian would want to happen is to hit a cow wandering over the train tracks.
The reason that GPS is not used in the US for trains more is because many times tracks run right next to each other and sometimes trains run on the right and other times on the left. GPS is not accurate enough to tell what track the train is on.
What happens when the USA turns off or munges GPS information again? Is Europe still considering if they should make a secondary GPS system?
Having heard countless stories from most of my Indian pals over the years, I'm really curious how much of a difference this GPS plan will make. Sure, it's might be better than the way things are right now, but it seems that the transportation problems are endemic to society and thus not fixable (or even help-able) with something like GPS devices. And this isn't limited to just trains; there are apparently bus accidents all the time, too.
Having not been to India myself, I have to go with my second-hand knowledge and stories I hear, but it pretty much sounds like the Indian economy would never support the kinds of changes required to make mass transit actually safe. I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on this.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
So the trains have a GPS doohicky in 'em, alright. And ya say that there doohicky can stop the train if the driver doesn't? Okeydokey.
And so you're sayin' I could sit next to the tracks and stop trains with the WiFi card in my Zaurus? Neat-o.
Saves having to follow the schedule!
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
I have an idea for improving train safety.
The biggest problem for train safety is that a train is hard to stop. It has so much mass that you can't just suddenly decide to stop it. In a perfect world, you would have some warning before you needed to stop it.
So make a much smaller vehicle that can stop quickly, and have that run out ahead of the train! Call it the "point car". Sensors on the point car would watch for an obstruction on the tracks (such as a stalled truck) and would halt the point car quickly; the train would stop more slowly, but it would have enough warning that it could stop before it reached the point car, let alone the obstruction. Also, you could mount a video camera on the front of the point car, and the engineer driving the train could watch a live video feed. A wireless radio link is probably the best way for the point car and the train to communicate.
I'm sure the biggest problem with my idea is that it would cost too much. The point car would need fuel of some sort, and would itself be an expensive piece of equipment, and you would need one for each train. It would be cool if the point car could be driven by electric motors that somehow parasite power off the train, but I don't think any sort of power extension cord would be very practical.
And of course, if India is only now spending the money to put cushions in for engineers to sit on, they won't be the first ones to try point cars.
I don't know much about train crashes -- what fraction of train crashes are preventable with just GPS, and what fraction are not? If the most common problem is a train hitting another train, then GPS on both trains would help a lot. But GPS won't do much good if a truck stalls across the tracks.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Indian Railways has over 62,000 route kms of track.
Indian Railways employs about 1.6 million people.
Carries over 11 million passengers & one million tonnes of freight everyday. (about 4.83 billion passengers and 492 million tons of freight per year)
It runs about 13,000 trains daily and has 6,984 railway stations.
The longest journey on Indian Railways is from Jammu Tawi to Kanyakumari, a distance of about 3,751 kms covered by Himsagar Express in about 66 hours.
Please read "Trains in Japan". Trains in Japan have been extremely reliable and clean since the 1950s -- almost half a century. In 1960, there was no GPS, no Internet, etc. Yet, the train system in Japan worked fine.
What in Indian culture prevents Indian society from developing into a modern society? Why does Indian society need all this high-tech intervention in order to make it just barely livable, yet Japan has been an adequately livable society since the late 1960s?
Amidst the bombard of vendors during the wait, at least I know now where to obtain a false passport.
Talking about trains always reminds me of my uncle Earl. Back in the day Earl took his test to become a train conductor since he loved trains so much.
It got to the oral part of the test and the proctor asked Earl "You have a northbound train running at 38 MPH and a southbound train on the same track running at 42 MPH. The trains are 6 miles from each other. Who do you call first to report this to?
Earl perked right up "I'll call my nephew imag0, of course!"
The proctor was puzzled and asked "Why would would call your nephew?"
"'Cause he's never seen a trainwreck before!"