From Trains Newswire: "The NTSB recommends that the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration work together to revise the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for the installation of advance warning devices that specifically use the word “train” to indicate the preemption of highway traffic signals by an approaching train and preemption confirmation lights that would provide advance information on train movements to law enforcement and emergency responders. "
The NTSB does good investigation work, but do they ever have a finding that doesn’t recommend spending someone else’s money? They should be required to do at least a cursory cost/benefit analysis of their recommendations. It’s a wonder the just don’t recommend the elimination of all highway road Xings…
That is why the NTSB “Recommends” To do otherwise you would have a political monster/nightmare ala the EPA who micromanages whole industries at the whim of a president.
LION could say more but only at the risk of being political. Sufice it to say that the NTSB recommends what should be done and others, those whose problem it is can fix it out of their own pocket.
On grade crossings, we have seen government interventions from back in the '20s: the elimination of grade crossings across state highways: and they ended up with twisted highways and low underpasses that cannot handle today’s traffic. A proper intervention would be for the railroad to CLOSE a problem intersection, and let the locality build a new overpass if that is what they want.
The NTSB makes recommendations because that’s part of its job. An NTSB accident report is also inadmissible as evidence in court, which explains why the reports include these recommendations without all the fuzziness, cost/benefit analyses and disclaimers that would otherwise be attached. Safety, including accident prevention, is the goal.
Interesting quote: “At the time, the driver missed many of the early warnings of the oncoming train because of several factors, one being that the float in front of him had been blowing a train whistle throughout the parade.”
The reaction to the NTSB’s recommendations is interesting here. The first thing that pops into peoples’ minds is about what would it cost to do rather than is it the right thing to do. If the NTSB or any similar investigative and enforcement agency were tied to financial considerations when ruling, then there would be no sense in investigating or ruling! Yeah, it may cost money to fix something, install something, to administer something. But you didn’t ask the NTSB what it would cost, you asked it to find the cause (in Americanese that means "blame) not the cost of fixing. If you don’t want to fix, it’s up to you, the violator, to decide. Do we want safe roads, railroads, neighborhoods and people or do we parse those conditions by attributing a cost value to safety with the ability to say no to improvements, lets kill some more?
Are we certain that an overpass built in the 1920s would have been built with clearance enough to handle double stacks? I tend to think that the underpasses you mention, and I’ve seen a number of them, were built to meet the foreseen needs of the day. I really don’t think anyone in 1920 quite envisioned the semis we allow on our roads today. What is today seen as a limiting height was quite sufficient for road vehicles back then.
As to overpasses, there are plenty of old overpasses that have had to be rebuilt to accommodate double stack required clearances.
As they say, hindsight is 20-20. How many old houses do you see around that have a garage that won’t fit today’s cars?
An interesting part of the linked article is the lawyers contention that NTSB didn’t get all of the information they had - like employees they say told them about crossing malfunctions…
“An interesting part of the linked article is the lawyers contention that NTSB didn’t get all of the information they had - like employees they say told them about crossing malfunctions…”
(hearsay) - assume that the City’s lawyers are whining along with the culpably negligent parade organizers.
Unless you are talking about the largest SUV’s - todays ‘cars’ are much smaller than the cars of the chrome age (40s - 50s and early 60s). Garages built in to 20’s did not fit the cars of the chrome age, however, they would accomidate many of todays eco-friendly cars.
And some of those cars are small enough that you could fit two… (or maybe three!)
The point remains, though. It was definitely true of our fire station - the 9’ high doors weren’t quite high enough when we got a new rescue truck - it was 10’ high. Today the only thing that would have fit in the old station doors is our brush truck.
Why is a light that says “TRAIN” the right thing to do? Why have the crossing at all? Compared to no crossing, a crossing with lights, gates, etc, is “unsafe.”
Fix? What’s broken?
Okay. We’re improving, not fixing. That’s better. How do we judge “improved”?
Driving at 10 mph is much safer than at 60 mph, so lets all go 10 mph. Is that “improved”?
Everything is a trade-off. The best method we have for evaluating the trade-offs is cost/benefit - and the NTSB is irresponsible for recommending things that are bad trade-offs. They need to put just a little effort into it IMHO.
There are different considerations in ‘efficacy’ or in ‘efficiency’. For an entity with deep pockets, costs may or may not figure most prominently. Yes, I know, an entity with deep pockets doesn’t get, or keep, them by being profligate or careless about money.
It seems to me that an organization charged with providing a list of potential solutions to a defined problem should offer such a list after careful analysis, and to rank order them in order of efficacy, not in terms of costs or any one particular consideration…UNLESS told to keep one or more of the two most imporant considerations in mind when submitting their findings.
Let’s be clear, “it” will always be determined by a political/governmental authority in the end, at some level, and a cost will either be shared or absorbed wholly by the entity on whom the eventually decided solution will be imposed. If the solution were only one in number, and the cost about $4M per solution in-situ, I’m pretty sure the only two choices would be go or no-go. Where to get the money is another matter entirely.
Backing up Henry6, the board is responsible for finding the causses of the accident. You who bring up costs are trying give it additional responsibilities that it does not have. An analogy would be for you to tell a judge in a criminal case not to pass what he or she considers an appropriate sentance because the jails are overcrowded and the money is lacking to build new ones.
In this country we invent many boards, authorities, investigative units, commissions, etc., to find answers. Often that is all they are supposed to do…find out why, maybe offer suggested solutions or changes. Few have the authority to issue mandates. So, it is up to the railroads and communities how they will interface safely and efficiently. If you don’t want to know why 10 people got killed here or there, why a whole town blew up in flames someplace, then don’t invent these entities as they take time and cost money. And when these entities do come back with answers as to what went wrong, who is to blame, and what could or should be done to assure it not happening again, don’t shoot the messenger because he did what you asked him to do. If you want or don’t want to accept the findings, do or don’t want to make the fix, is up to you. I don’t understand Oltmann’s responses here, but, yes, it takes money to do things…to find out what happened and why, to determine what if anything should be done, and to do what has to be done. Simple. it is, no argument to be made. But debate and determination of following through is a must… Otherwise there is no sense of investigating in the first place.
Your points are well taken. Nonetheless, I suspect that the concern by many for the cost of recommendations such as these is the direct result of the endless waste by government at all levels from local to federal. Hardly a day goes by without new revelations of needless expenditures, frivolous studies, duplication of effort by competing and overlapping entities within government, fraud, etc. It cannot help but cast a cloud of suspicion over what might otherwise be a legitimate activity.
A train hits a car on a grade crossing in your town and two people die and traffic is held up for hours on the street… There is an investigation and the report says the crossing is inadequately protected and suggest an improvement. So, do you make the improvement or do you allow there to be more cars being hit, more people dying, and more traffic blockages. That’s all there is to the questions raised here.
What is the working definition of “inadequate”? Flashers are better that crossbucks. Gates are better than flashers. There are standards. When does a standard become “inadequate”?