The January Trains has an interview with the Wi-Tronix CEO. Although in the interview it’s mostly about trespasser incidents, Wi-Tronix also has a fatigue/distraction system that use AI to monitor in cab camera video (and maybe realtime monitoring) and look for signs of fatigue or distraction. The item I saw in Railroad Age says the W-T monitor will look for possible distractions while moving like drinking (plain drinking like water, coffee, pop, etc.), eating, not sitting in an erect, upright position, etc.
One (actually a few more-maybe later) question. The rules require looking back frequently, especially on curves, and inspecting the train. The linked video says looking out the window for a few seconds is a distraction event. So, does this mean people will get fired for following the rules?
Jeff
PS. If you look closely at some shots of the video you’ll see that Trains’ webcam isn’t the only one to have spider issues.
Interesting, in my car it works via detecting minute changes in lane positioning, corective action to lane positioning, response time to speed changes measured by brake pedal pressure. The steering wheel is vibrated if the car detects your not staying awake…I don’t think there is a distraction feature. If it keeps happening with the time between occurences decreasing then the radio is turned down in volume and a audio alarm starts with a image of a coffee cup illuminated on the dash.
Not to mention that it’s normal to look out the window at the ground to see if you’re actually moving, when starting from a stop. Or keeping an eye on an oncoming car at a crossing, to see if they’re going to stop. Whole lot of variables there…
I suspect there will be negotiations between labor and management as to what constitutes a distraction.
“…Fatigue prevention(?) systems…” Before I retired from trucking, we were being emersed in the causes of fatigue related incidents. It was, micro-naps that were the results of ‘fatigue’, and the suspicions were that it was micro-naps that were the causes of many incidents, like rear-enders, running into parked traffic,etc. Remedies were being presented as devices, that would hang on a drivers ear, resembling the size of a large hearing aid. The mechanism was an integrated switch, that would contain a liquid that would move around in a cell, when a driver’s head started to nod; setting off an alarm.
Did not early diesel locomotives have a spring loaded peddle, that an engineer was required to keep depressed? If the engineer allowed it to move up, it caused an ‘unscheduled’ brake application(?).
Now someone has created an electronic device to force an engineer to sit bolt-up right, and focus straight ahead? Sounds sort of bizzare. A human being operating heavy equipment is going to move around in their seat, look around [f
As someone who’s not as physically and mentally capable as he used to be, I have to ask: This prevents fatigue how? (For some reason I’m still waiting on my January issue…I didn’t think I’d see the day when my lifetime subscription expired.)
Today we have the alerter - if nothing is done with any of the controls for a period of time you get a series of warnings, from a flashing light to some loud beeping. A push of a button resets it. In the yard it’s about 20 seconds. Out on the road it’s two minutes. Normally the button gets pushed as soon as the light starts flashing.
It’s been said that the reset can reflexive - requiring no conscious thought. Flash, push, flash, push.
I’ve had times when the train has settled in nicely at a given throttle setting and about all I have to do is hit the alerter button every couple of minutes. In our territory, that’s not often, but on a Class 1, there could be lengthy periods that are like that.
I’ve seen on NS and CSX engines a spring “whisker” that acknowledges the alerter. I like them. Some of our buttons need to be pushed 2 or 3 times to get it to make contact to reset. A few times I’ve just bailed off the independent to get it to reset because the button wasn’t cooperating.
Once in a while you’ll get one where the time period is set to 15 or 20 seconds. That get’s annoying r
I’d wager the monitoring center will be overloaded with alerts from detected “distractions”. Some of the biggest distractions are the things they require us to use. Energy management systems, distributed power, PTC, even normal locomotive operations require looking at some kind of computer screen. Since there are a limited number of screens, sometimes you have to page through them to find what you need for a specific operation. Depending on how sensative the system is set, the alerts will be constant.
Been there baby, up and down both sides of that street!
Then there was the one that started blowing as soon as you started to release the independent. You had to remember to hit the flipper before moving the brake handle! Eeek!
I remember watching an interview with Col. Robin Olds. He noted all of the warning bells and whistles going off in the cockpit of his F-4 as he went into combat and how he would have to turn them off just to be able to consentrate!
So true!
Fatigue prevention would work on the cause of fatigue. This system does not do that, but hats off to the marketing person that decided to use the word “prevention” instead of “detection” - which is what this thing actually does.
The detection thing is fine, provided it’s not just another “hammer” or an excuse not to figure out how to do real fatigue prevention (starts that match circadian rhythm) and fatigue mitigation (naps!).
It’s amazing to me how much time, effort, words and money the RRs spend on the fatigue issue without actually addressing the real cause and cures.
From what I am hearing from my former workers, the future is upon us and the craft of locomotive engineer is, for all intents and purposes, dead! It has become debased to the form of “Babysitter” supervised by “Forth Grade Hall Monitors”!
A bunch of the ex-CSX Dash-8’s CN is currently leasing have those too. Before them I had only seen the springy toggles on the simulators at our Winnipeg training centre. I like them too.
Try neutral and throttle 1 next time you are stopped. Works pretty good on our units.
On ours having the reverser in forward activates the alerter, even if the independent is fully applied.