The criticism was completely justified, and it was not by just one person.
What’s really amazing to me is how the car driver could have done that when the whole place is so well lit.
I recall a similar layout in Oakland CA, down by Jack London Square. Back in the day, at least, it wasn’t lit; so the poor screwup at least had SOME excuse. And, yup, I saw cars “parked” there.
Ed
That’s your opinion - which I think is wrong. But that’s my opinion.
Car hit the ballast at 18:22:35 Train appears at 18:26:20 - less than 4 minutes after the car fouled the right of way. There are no first responders on scene until the edit places the train in the scene - no way, from the video, to know when first responders initiated communications to the railroad.
Train was braking long before the incident was visible to the train crew. Train impacted the car at 18:27:10 and was fully stopped at 18:27:20.
Notice that both the PD & FD first responders moved their vehicles out of the way before impact.
Normal chain of communications is First Responder to their own dispatch center, FRDC to CSX PSCC command center, PSCC command center to BD (RF&P Train Dispatcher), BD Dispatcher to train.
What is your opinion as to why it is wrong to criticize that engineer for waiting until striking the two empolyees before applying emergency braking? Why should she have waited?
I’m not engaging with you on this. Sorry.
I think it was great the way they first responders had all the flashers going. In addition to warning motorists and pedestrians, it may have also let the train engineer know sooner than he otherwise would have that there was a situation there, and probably not one that was going to resolve itself in time.
Alcohol, pot or other drugs, texting, cell phone usage or other ways of being distracted while driving. Maybe never having been to that crossing before, or never before in daylight. Or a combination of some of the above. And don’t rule out dumb.
Personally, I would tend to trust Zug’s opinion on this, just as with freight-train braking policy, implicitly. (So neither he nor I will choose to engage the issue any further… I’m already highly sorry I mentioned it.)
Agree, that and it’s night time and the locomotive engineer is not letting up on the horn at all, then you have the obvious police car strobes next to an upcomming crossing…I would think he would slow down just for the potential of emergency people being in close proximity even if he didn’t see the car on the tracks from a distance.
Local news reports that bystanders heard the driver tell police he was following his GPS.
https://www.nbc12.com/story/34265838/train-strikes-car-in-ashland/
zugmann
Euclid
The criticism was completely justified, and it was not by just one person.That’s your opinion - which I think is wrong. But that’s my opinion.
Overmod said:
Personally, I would tend to trust Zug’s opinion on this, just as with freight-train braking policy, implicitly. (So neither he nor I will choose to engage the issue any further… I’m already highly sorry I mentioned it.)
Overmod, I cannot properly quote your post that I want to respond to because the “Add Quote to your Post” instruction and 3-dot icon are for some reason outside of boundary box of your post. So I have quoted it manually.
But you say you trust Zug’s opinion on this. What opinion is that? The only opinion that he stated was that my opinion is wrong; and my opinion was that the criticism of the engineer (about waiting until impact to begin emergency braking) was completely justified. He does not think that criticism was justified, and you apparently now agree. And yet you started this whole line of discussion by criticising the engineer. So you appear to be taking two opposing positions on this matter.
My opinion was that her waiting to put the train in ‘emergency’ until actually striking the conductor(s), but then wiping it to emergency, was pointless.
You as I recall from the older thread were arguing, with some force, that she should have put the train in emergency well before that point. I took that to be the opinion with which Zug was disagreeing, not the idea that putting the train in emergency after ‘it no longer mattered’ was primarily either sentimentality or CYA.
Even so, if Zug were to think there were a reason to use emergency only after hitting someone, and explained his reasoning, I would most likely not criticize it.
Now I expect to be taken to task for saying I wasn’t going to engage on the issue, and then engaging. Guilty as charged if so.
As I said earlier - GPS units can be ‘very demanding’ when they issue their turn instructions. The driver needs to have situational observations before complying with the instruction.
Waiting until after impact to go into emergency is not what I would call pointless. The point is to prevent the questioning, delay, or other inconvenience as a consequence of dumping the air for what might be said to be no good reason should the vehicle happen to clear in time after the air is dumped.
And if the vehicle does not clear in time, there is the handy rationalization/excuse that the train was going to fast to stop in time even if an emergency application had been made prior to impact.
The point of waiting until it no longer mattered is not that it no longer mattered, ho hum, nothing to critcize because it no longer matters. The point is that delaying until it no longer mattered means that nothing was done to prevent a death while it did matter.
Emergency application was at 1:09 in the video when the engine was about a 1/3 of the way into the crossing. Watch the cab don’t pay attention to any thing else in the video. You’ll see the cab light up red. Which is a feature on newer GE’s when a emergency brake application is initiated the cab lights illuminate in red, not to sure about EMD’s having this cab light feature.
I think that one of the arguments used for delayed application of emergency was that you could have a train that the slack was both bunched as well as pulled out on the same train, and the possibility that putting such a train into emergency might cause a more serious derailment.
So, by riding a manual application first, the entire train gets bunched. Then go into emergency.
I swear that I saw somewhere someone mentioning that waiting until contact was a policy with one of the railroads, but I can’t find it now…perhaps the comment was made in jest, and I just failed to appreciate it as such?
Still, the video to me seems to indicate that the train began to slow down more abruptly upon contact…perhaps that is a red herring?
The braking curve is not a straight line. It likely would have appeared as such even without the collision.
That is a reasonable explanation.[:)]
Too much focus in blaming individuals, whether driver or train engineer. In most aspects of life events, the causes are multifactorial, including systemic failures. Obviously something is amiss in crossing protection and protecting trains and their personnel from each other. I think that should be the focus for prevention rather than the current atomistic approach of the NTSB.