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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."
While I'm not fully aware of the details of this story, it really seems to me that they are only looking to put the blame on the weakest side, which is obviously the workers. Even if the guy did screw up, it would be ridiculous to think a camera would be capable of preventing an accident. Where are the technical failsafes to limit the train's speed? Guess true security updates have been eaten by their desire for profit and instead been replaced with cheap cameras so they can say "oh no, we were watching the guy but he was a terrorist who shut down the camera" or any other crap to get their fat a$$es out of the way.
"I decided I could write something better than everything out there in two weeks. And I was right." - Linus Torvalds
Most train engineers are not federal employees.
Maybe install the friggin speed arrestors that should have been in that particular train back in 2012. I'd rather KNOW that the passengers are safe, instead of being able to watch the engineer fall asleep at the switch after the fact.
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 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.