I’m just wondering what people as a whole think about this idea, and wondering how some think that this could be a good idea.
I’m a railroad employee, and I absolutely dread the thought of having a camera facing me at all times. There are already microphones placed at the conductor and engineer positions, but with the prototype engine with cameras in it, there are 3 of them facing us. One right above the head of the engineer, same with the conductor, one facing the 2 of us, and another facing outward towards the front. The camera’s can be checked on at any point in time remotely.
How would you like to go about your daily job, with someone placing a camera right above your head?
Just wondering what other people would think of this.
It’s gonna make everybody in management feel and look good. It is going to put smug faces on federal and state regulators because they can tell their political bosses and the public that they did something. It’s gonna do nothing to improve safety but it will give supervisors something to do and come after engineers for if they sneeze their teeth out or wipe their glassesses (I did put in the “gl” for glasses). Will it prevent an engineer from falling asleep or turning to talk to the visiting trainman or conductor? Will it really make a difference? No.
Put in PTC. Make sure whatever deadman control or alerter is working. Put a second man in the cab. Test engineers more often than now. Putting a camera on him will not make him a star or management better directors. Leave the theatrics to Hollywood and Broadway and run a railroad.
The odds of us seeing anything other than tourist’s cameras isn’t all that high, but it could happen.
On the plus side, if something goes wrong and everything that went on in the cab was right, they could serve as proof that the crew wasn’t at fault.
A possible plus would be the weeding out of crew members who should be weeded out. (Bad for them, though.)
On the minus side, nominally acceptable activities that are actually against the rules (ie, discussing yesterday’s game, perhaps) will have to be off the table.
And worst of all, the “big brother” aspect that everything you do in the cab is now subject to scrutiny, and a supervisor who is overzealous or whatever could make life miserable.
Bank tellers and casino workiers notwithstanding (and other places that have routine video surveillance), most folks wouldn’t want a camera looking over their shoulder at their desk. At least now if you’re playing Solitaire you can shut it down before the boss gets to your desk…
I think about as much of inward-facing cameras in railroading as I do of them in convenience stores – which is to say, I think less of them than I do of buzzer-based alerter systems.
Now, it would be nice to have emergency cams that went on during emergencies, showing the inside of the cab. Might even be nice to have a camera that could capture a view inside the cab when the crew wanted it so. But something always-on aimed directly at’cha? That’s the stuff of bad dystopian science fiction.
Look for the excuses when someone needs or wants to do some firing. Or produce some exhibits for political presentations. Lots of fun sharing the feed around with insurance underwriters and the like. All in the name of safety, but producing little actual safety.
Yes, it will probably have some positive effect – as Dave Klepper pointed out for alerters, there will always be people who straighten up and fly right when they see the little red light come on. What I feel sorry for is those people who intentionally keep the little red light on all the time, or stream the video to folks on a fishing expedition for little weed-weasel technical rules violations. That’s mistaking the form for the substance in providing a safe working environment…
I hardly think Nineteen EightyFour is bad dystopian science fiction, but to each his own opinion.
Without some way to correct bad behavior, such as a sleeping crew member, there really aren’t any safety improvements. While the cameras may be a deterrent, they cannot prevent an accident unless the person watching the camera can correct the problem.
PTC will eliminate the accidents caused by sleeping crew members, anyway, so the incident that is causing this (the Metro North derailment) would never have occurred.
Public surveillance cameras in stores where there are shoplifters or robbers who might endanger employees and patrons are good. But to put one camera on one person makes a stressful situation more stressful. What if we aimed cameras at our Congressmen 24/7? Or the CEO’s of every company? Or how would you like to be the trailed around all day by a camera? Further, and again, this is not the route to safety, to safe operations, to cure accidents and crashes. There are so many other less intrusive, less stressful and more capable ways of accomplishing better safety. Yes, it is on the shoulders of the engineer to operate a train safely, but not on his nerves nor in his eyes.
My point of view is similarly inclined, henry6 said: [snip] “… Further, and again, this is not the route to safety, to safe operations, to cure accidents and crashes…” [snip]
This is a lawyer’s (politician’s?) attempt to make their own job seem easier by a Band-Aid patch on a growing problem.
I would agree with the placement of an outward facing camera to show what the crew was facing at a particular point in their job, can have a valuable , safety function Having ridden on OLI Safety Trains with forward facing video feeds, and seeing the horror of what a crew faces when a vehicle presents itself in front of them; is a scary enough scenario.
To place several cameras in the cab of a locomotive, pointing directly at a crewman, while monitoring their every move; is a
This is about the response that I thought I would get, generally being negative towards this idea. With cameras installed I think that they might gather more information than they would want too. For example, an engineer cannot leave the control stand on a moving train, and well expect trains to be coming to an unexpected stop now for a bathroom break. Also, my railroad says you have to have on safety glasses at all times… And you cannot smoke in the engine cab nor can you use an E-cig device because the FRA considers it an electronic device like a cell phone. (see how this can get really complicated?)
The most intrusive aspect of it personally is that the engine cab is sometimes used to changed clothes. There have been times in my career where I have had to work in the rain on the ground and get back in the engine soaked, and go to that back engine and strip down on my clothes and hang them over the heaters in an attempt to dry them. Can’t really do that anymore.
If the Union and the Railroad management got together and established guidelines, I think something could be worked out.
A starting place: A camera and crew voice recorder that stores only the most recent 20 minutes with a mechanism to freeze it in the event of a collision and is not available for management review unless there is an incident. Perhaps only reviewable by the NTSB during an accident investigation.
For those afraid of being monitored, it would occur only if whatever you did wrong resulted in an incident. It would also show if you did nothing wrong and the fault is all external.
My opinion : I would have loved to have cameras pointing inward to our drafting office, I was the youngest guy there, so I got all the worst jobs and most of the work while these other jerks sat and looked out the window and talked about their pensions, time after time more work was piled on me by “senior” draftsmen, guess who had to work overtime and weekends (I was single) and who took vacation in the middle of January, if there were cameras present 99% of these bozos could never hold a job, and this carried on throughout the industry,and this with a company that was fanatically anti-union.
I bet if there were cameras present before the wreck, it may have shown this guy falling asleep on other occasions and he may have been fired, would that be all right to save a few injuries or even deaths???
First the Operator was Female. And there were surveillance cameras and they got pics of the Train trying to climb the escalator after it went though the end of track Bumper… It is anyone’s guess at which point she woke up. [zzz]