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Amtrak Installing Cameras To Watch Train Engineers
An anonymous reader writes: In the aftermath of the derailment of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia a couple weeks ago, the company has caved to demands that it install video cameras to monitor and record the actions of the engineers driving their trains. The National Transportation Safety Board has been recommending such cameras for the past five years. Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman says the cameras will improve train safety, though the engineers' union disagrees. In 2013, the union's president said, "Installation of cameras will provide the public nothing more than a false sense of security. More than a century of research establishes that monitoring workers actually reduces the ability to perform complex tasks, such as operating a train, because of the distractive effect."
They used to be called engineers in the UK, in the early days, then the term fell out of use. The original term was "engine-man". BBC articles are so helpful.
I can understand the engineer's union attitude towards this. Would YOU want a camera on you all day? Do we really need to know whether the engineer picks his nose? OTOH it really should deter people from, e.g., talking on the phone while they're supposed to be driving. To balance the preventive threat and the privacy issue, the video should be under seal somehow, and wiped after a few days - unwatched! - if nothing interesting happened that day. Maybe an hour of each person gets viewed once a week or so, which hour and which day chosen at random, just like drivers never knowing when there's a police car sitting on the shoulder around a bend.
Most train engineers are not federal employees.
It is a publicly funded private corporation.
Kinda like the post office, or maybe Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac would be a better analogy.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
It does not always help...
One of the UK train operators has just had its permission to operate on the main lines pulled after the driver having failed to acknowledge an automatic alert in time and having had the automation apply the brakes, took it upon himself to close the valve between the brake pipe and the automatic protection system (to avoid having to come to a stop), while doing so he missed a signal set at caution (The rules require that an activation of the train protection system brings the train to a complete stop, the driver must then contact the signal box having responsibility before moving on).....
Not having slowed down the train then could not stop in time when the driver spotted the next signal (at danger), causing the train to then plow across the main line only 1 minute after the high speed commuter train that was the reason for the red signal had passed.....
This was not just a spad, this was a grade A, full monty, "hey y'all watch this' SPAD, we can only be thankful nobody was hurt.
The slightly unfortunate thing is that the train in question was a special being pulled by a steam locomotive, and the company in question specializes in running such things, but safety comes first, and the management failed totally to take the thing seriously (and not for the first time, they have a spectacularly poor record).
The RAIB writeup should be interesting (In a comments on NASAs management after Challenger sort of way).
Automatic brakes are good, but given a sufficient numpty on the foot plate, there really is nothing you can do.
More than a century of research establishes that monitoring workers actually reduces the ability to perform complex tasks, such as operating a train, because of the distractive effect.
Citation please? I'm an industrial engineer professionally and monitoring of workers is a pretty big part of my professional life. I'm not aware of any credible evidence that as a general principle that monitoring workers reduces ability to perform tasks. Perhaps a clumsy system in specific circumstances but claims of any "distracting effect" sound like union representative talking points rather than actual scientific facts. In fact in my experience the opposite is typically true. I find that people tend to be more vigilant when they are aware they are being monitored as a general rule. Some people dislike it but as long as they aren't interrupted the monitoring is rarely actually distracting. Pilots in aircraft have everything they say monitored and yet somehow they manage to operate a vehicle that is even more complex than a train quite competently.
Speaking as someone who spent three and a half years working on Positive Train Control software, it's not as simple as throwing a GPS on the train.
There are a huge number of operating rules that must be enforced besides just a base speed limit. Not only does every mile of track have a speed limit that can vary widely, every type of train has a maximum safe operating speed that must also be considered. Then there are all the temporary speed limits that the computer has to know about. If there's a work crew out on the tracks, they drop the speed limit. If there's damage to the track, they drop the speed limit. etc. Then there are all the signals along the route. There's half a dozen different types across the country depending on what has been upgraded and what hasn't and they all govern how fast you are allowed to go at that location at that time. Then you have to throw in all of the other things along the track like grade crossings and switches. There's a bunch of different types of each and they all have different rules on what you have to do when you approach them. To top it off, you can't go anywhere until a dispatcher grants you authority to run on the track. And that's done in any of a dozen different ways depending on who owns the track and where it is.
Did I mention that the operating rules are different for each railroad? They are and you have to make sure you follow the right rules.
Then you can have the added complexity of interoperability. Every railroad, by contract, is allowed to operate on each others track. They even contract out engineers between each other. So you can have a BNSF engineer operating a CSX locomotive on UP track. And you have to have to figure out which rules apply in that case because they're different than an Amtrak engineer operating the same CSX locomotive on the same UP track. Or a BNSF engineer operating a KCS locomotive on UP track.
Then when you think you have that all figured out, throw in the fact that we have agreements with Canada that let our trains run back and forth between two countries.
Once you have all of that complexity, you have to be able to predict how long it takes to slow a train down so you know how far back you have to get off the throttle and/or hit the brakes. That calculation is impacted by the number of cars in the train, the weight of the cars, the grade of the track, the curves you're riding on, and even how long it takes for the air pressure to be let out of the brake line (a long time in a mile long train). There's a ton of calculus being done by the computer several times a second to keep an accurate estimation of your braking curve. Beyond that, the computer has to give the engineer a warning before cutting in and doing his job for him. So you have to predict the stopping distance with the added distance you'd travel if you wait a specified time after warning but before you enforce the stop.
Now, you have all of that. Then you have to factor in that your GPS isn't always accurate so you can't always count on the fact that it will tell you precisely where you are. Running through a tunnel cuts off your GPS feed. As you get towards the mouth of the tunnel, you get a lot of multipath errors that make your GPS location jump around pretty damn fast so you have to program the computer to account for it. The backup is the wheel tachometer that lets the computer know how fast the train is going and you can assume that a train isn't going to be jumping off the tracks 500 feet into a field to the left so that does make the job a little easier. But just when you think you've solved the problem, you have to deal with the fact that the diameter of the wheel isn't 100% constant. Sure, it's a steel wheel and it doesn't change rapidly. But it does wear down as the train is driven. So you have to keep calibrating the wheel diameter over the miles because even a small variation can lead to a significant position error over a long trip. A 0.1% error over a 1,000 mile trip will have you a mile off from where you really are. And 1,000 mile trips are a daily occurrence with trains.
So yeah, it's not as easy as just throwing a GPS on your locomotive and calling it good.
You say that as if PTC has been installed and fully vetted. I can tell you from personal experience that the technology is still years away from being a reliable safety system. I used to work for the leading company that's building it for Amtrak and all the other major railroads.
You have no clue. I've been running Amtrak trains for 18 years. There is no intentional speeding, over 10mph and you lose your federally issued lisence for 30 days, second time you get caught 6 months and probably won't have a job to come back to. That's all laid out in the CFR. Everything is recorded, no one would dare. Remember we mess up and we're right there in an accident with you. Here's what I assume happened from my experience. He was newish to that route, I've read 2 -3 weeks, thought he was somewhere else, sped up, realized it and dumped the brakes. It takes years to know a route.