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TGV Accident Caused By Excessive Speed (railwaygazette.com)
Cochonou writes: Analysis of the black boxes of the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) which derailed on Saturday revealed that the accident resulted from excessive speed and late braking. The test train entered a 945m-radius curve at a speed of 265 km/h, far over the maximum speed of 176 km/h. The French national railway company ruled out any other cause, such as mechanical failure or track mishap.
During test runs, a number of security features are disabled, in particular parts of the TVM system, which would have prevented any overspeed during normal service. This leaves the train speed under the sole responsibility of the driver.
The accident, which killed 11 people, occurred on the last run of the scheduled trials on the new high-speed line between Paris and Strasbourg. As more details on the accident surface, it becomes evident that this last run was performed in a festive spirit, with relatives (including children) of the employees on board, and seven people present in the train cab instead of train. This casts a shadow on the security procedures of the French national railway company: it appears that the high-speed train technology is considered so safe that the risks inherent to trials runs were somehow neglected. The two drivers and the traction inspector have been suspended pending possible criminal charges. Other changes in the management structure will probably follow.
During test runs, a number of security features are disabled, in particular parts of the TVM system, which would have prevented any overspeed during normal service. This leaves the train speed under the sole responsibility of the driver.
The accident, which killed 11 people, occurred on the last run of the scheduled trials on the new high-speed line between Paris and Strasbourg. As more details on the accident surface, it becomes evident that this last run was performed in a festive spirit, with relatives (including children) of the employees on board, and seven people present in the train cab instead of train. This casts a shadow on the security procedures of the French national railway company: it appears that the high-speed train technology is considered so safe that the risks inherent to trials runs were somehow neglected. The two drivers and the traction inspector have been suspended pending possible criminal charges. Other changes in the management structure will probably follow.
Black box audio from the train revealed seven spectators in the cab chanting "Plus vite! Plus vite! Plus vite!"
Better known as 318230.
So it's not just rednecks and their pickup trucks.
you mean the TVM system. the system that was disabled for testing....
In case you missed it in the summary:
During test runs, a number of security features are disabled, in particular parts of the TVM system, which would have prevented any overspeed during normal service. This leaves the train speed under the sole responsibility of the driver.
Positive Train Control is effectively the US equivalent of TVM, and so would have been disabled even if it was used on TGV.
I was gonna say, "well, seeing what happens when you go too fast is part of a test pilot / driver's job", until the article mentioned bringing kids along. Ugh, that's reprehensible.
Why isn't this automated? I know... they say it's a test run, so certain safety features are disabled, but ffs, can't you at least find an operator who knows wtf he's doing? This is just sad.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
"seven people present in the train cab instead of train" What is that suppose to even mean?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Unless my math is wrong, 10.5 gun related deaths a year per 100,000 population comes about to about 93 gun related deaths a day in the US. ((322,200,000/100,000)*10.5)/365.2425 = 92.6. So you are not wrong there.
And yes, when you're all hyped up on shit like guns, of course you make bad judgments and accidents happen.
....crash caused by excessive speed. Who knew?
At least in europe on numerous metro systems. Welcome to the 21st century USA!
However you can't expect automated systems to test themselves. You'll still need humans in the test loop somewhere. Plus for the sort of speeds the TGV gets up to I imagine most people would still prefer someone to be up front if even all he does is to feed the dog that bites him if he touches the controls.
Drivin' that train, high on Champaigne...
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
There are two computer-driven subway lines in Paris, with plans to develop this technology to other lines.
I think the problem is mostly one of certification. Full authority autopilot code is held to much stricter standards than driving aids, even though they are essentially the same thing on trains.
Also, the human driver is usually the only technical person on the train and may need to deal with various problems like various types of obstacle or malfunctions. An autopilot may guarantee the train safety by breaking before the obstacle but may be clueless about what to do afterward : people (healthy or not), animals, rocks other trains or track damage are not dealt with the same way. Should the police be called ? Is there a medical emergency ? For how long will the traffic be interrupted ? Is there a danger for other trains on the same line ? Automated subway lines mitigate the problem with an array of sensors and passive measures (walls) that would be impractical for long distances.
To get Egg you need chicken.
Before setup of the security system you need to finish the track test itself. From my understanding this was some early test where the TVM & other system were not yet opperating (in progress of setup).
Latest test track are run using a special trail that is Iris 320 and will check everything including that the TVM is fully fonctionnal.
Until that point, trains must be run in manual mode with additional security rules to avoid issues.
Clearly the security measures were not followed. We anticipate the guys will be sacked because of that (they might be chatting one with another).
The problem was that for test run there are lots of "civilian" people on bord that want to be there to see such unique moment.
It always end-up with people going into the cockpit. This can result into disturbing the pilote. This becomes a serious problem if you are on a test run without automatic safety on.
I also anticipate new rules will be set to prevent such issues.
If there are criminal charges, I expect that they will be with token 'punishments'. To an average, sane, person, what punishment can compare to the knowledge that almost a dozen people were senselessly murdered because of your poor judgement? There are no reparations they could make to the victims or their families for the loss.
This knowledge will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
I don't need your modsplaining, asshole. Please, don't hate.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What resistor is that? Please elaborate.
I know a bit about signals and I know of no such resistor. The equipment and control logic for US signal systems are fail-safe designs, based on the standard AREMA guidelines and any failures will cause the signals to go all red.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
And yet, the job of a car's "driving aid" is much harder than that of a train's autopilot. So it is reasonable to expect self-driving trains before self-driving cars.
None of these require the driver to be physically present on a train — camera feeds can tell a remote dispatcher ("driving" 20 trains at the same time) all he needs to know about obstacles and interruptions. As for medical, fire, or police emergencies — those are reported by passengers pushing a button (or by talking to a conductor). The push may as well (and probably already does) connect them to the emergency dispatchers wherever they are — and with the speed the train is going, it will get to the next village or town before the caller finishes explaining, what's going on.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Union rules required railroads to keep firemen around long after the last steam engines had been retired and replaced with diesel-electrics, even though they had no real job to do. Keeping engineers around when trains can pretty much run themselves sounds like more of the same.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
10.5 gun related deaths a year per 100,000 population .... in the US
But only 3.01 in France.
more people die in a couple of days in the US of A from bullets than died in the Paris terrorist attack
Way to go! Bring the issue of USA gun ownership into the discussion!
We need the equivalent of Godwin's rule to describe doing this. I'd call it Nukenerd's rule.
Yet one more accident that could have been prevented by Positive Train Control
Wouldn't a hosts file have prevented it?
That's what Poland said
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Gun violence is gun violence. Doesn't matter if it's a terrorist or a robbery or a crazy person. The comparison is valid. The question should be, Why is it considered acceptable that so many people die from bullets in the US? If it were a disease, there would be a charity funding research into it.
Trop Grande Vitesse
Gun violence is gun violence. Doesn't matter if it's a terrorist or a robbery or a crazy person.
Think you missed my point. TFA is about a railway accident.
Why are we still using humans to drive the trains? We already have computer-driven cars on the roads — and driving a car is a lot harder for a computer both because of the complex terrain and human-only signalling.
I wonder, what is it? Is it a fear of protests by union-thugs? Engineers' own inertia?
As one such engineer (formerly), I can tell you that one reason is passenger unease with having no driver, and another is to have staff on hand to deal with emergency situations (like evacuation). We have yet to see public unease with driverless cars abate - perhaps then we could have driverless trains. That might seem the wrong way round (as you say, trains are one-dimensional), but the public (and the press) illogically demand a far higher safety standard (real or as they perceive) for trains than cars - a source of exasperation for us railway engineers.
Having said that, there are some driverless railways - the [low speed] London Dockland Light Railway for example [low speed and driverless, but not staff-less]
We're very close to that. Problems are:
1. The technology is mostly there but rarely all there. The US, for example, is rolling out PTC, which is 90% of the self-driving-train solution (though it's intended to be merely a safety upgrade), but PTC will not be universal. While Europe is way ahead of the Americas on this, largely because they're not stupid, boneheaded, and corrupt when it comes to transportation policy (and thus they take trains seriously rather than deliberately running them down, making them all but unobtainable, and then claiming nobody wants them when nobody rides once-a-day museum relics whose stations are 50 miles away from anywhere you want to go and whose speed rarely breaks 50mph) PTC is still not universal.
2. You do, still, need equivalents of the technologies going into, for example, Google's self driving car. Did a tree fall on the track? Has heat bent the rails out of shape? Is there an idiot driving parallel to the train who's likely to jump the tracks at the next crossing (well, in fairness, human engineers can't generally deal with that either, and usually have to suffer the trauma associated with slamming on the brakes, getting out, and finding bits of someone's head on the track.) What about a washout?
3. Yeah... unions. I hate blaming unions for anything, largely because 90% of the time when someone claims unions are the thing that killed a particular industry or stops needed reform from happening, they're making it up or at the very least massively exaggerating. In this case, however, the unions have this issue on their radar and have been fighting smaller crews, and expressed concerns that PTC = 1 engineer or eventually no engineers.
There are automated systems out there, but they generally run in completely enclosed subway tunnels and have a high degree of human monitoring. Until PTC can be augmented with techologies that can visually and non-visually verify the tracks ahead are safe, we can't really automate any major conventional intercity railways.
But I bet it wouldn't take a year for, say, a team made up of Google's self driving car engineers to create those technologies.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
High on not being able to spell, apparently.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
But it had the same basic cause, stupid humans.
Should we be arming the engineers? (Desperately trying to make it on-topic.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Regarding problems with the track... it seems like an engineer driving a TGV train at 200 mph isn't going to be able to do much by the time he sees a tree or washed out track, on account of F=ma and all.
There's a good chance that you're unfamiliar with it but they should have let the monkey drive.
"Open up the switch, I'm gonna let him through the hole, 'cause the monkey's got the locomotive under control."
-The Monkey and the Engineer (a different Grateful Dead song that doesn't get radio play)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
At least it wasn't another terrorist attack.
We still aren't sure the engineer that drove to fast wasn't a secret muslim. Or a soviet sleeper agent, and ISIS cracked the codes of the KGB to activate them. We are all in grave danger.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
"...on account of F=ma and all."
I think you mean 1/2mv**2