You clearly do not understand the effect of negative emotions, particularly fear, on people. Perhaps you cannot put yourself in another’s shoes. Some people flee, while some freeze. Calculations of distance and speed and how much time remains are easy sitting at home, not for a man who probably has become quite fear prone because of being in a wheelchair or scooter, a sense of helplessness.
charlie hebdo
You clearly do not understand the effect of negative emotions, particularly fear, on people. Perhaps you cannot put yourself in another’s shoes. Some people flee, while some freeze. Calculations of distance and speed and how much time remains are easy sitting at home, not for a man who probably has become quite fear prone because of being in a wheelchair or scooter, a sense of helplessness.
And this is why I ask - was this a regular trip for him, or the first time on this route? If it was a regular trip, maybe he got complacent and started across without thoroughly checking for trains. Perhaps he has cognitive issues.
Maybe he’s gotten stuck there before but never encountered a train before someone helped him out of his predicament.
Good points. The concept of relative contributory negligence comes to mind. Somewhat similar would be the case of a homeowner who fails to safeguard a backyard pool with fencing. The pool is his and on his own property.&
Wouldn’t that, by definition, qualify as a “cognitive issue”? “Deer in the headlights” would qualify as a cognitive lapse.
I don’t know what Tree’s level of education is, but I feel confident that just through the line of work that he is in, he has substantial experience dealing with people who are “stress impaired”.
Why you have to equate that with your perception of his level of education, seems uncalled for. And borders on a personal attack. (IMO)
I would suggest you read posts correctly and not put words in other’s’ mouths. Then again, that’s what you do. There was no attempt at commenting on Larry’s education level, just an indication of the usual college course where that information might be imparted.
Cognitive issues means something entirely different, either a congenital deficit or a cerebral insult or illness. In any case, not a transient state of mind.
Your attempt to stir up trouble is typical. I was told of it years ago by a former moderator.
Psychguides.com lists the following as signs of cognitive disorder, several of which sound like they could be factors in this incident:
Confusion
Poor motor coordination
Loss of short-term or long-term memory
Identity confusion
Impaired judgment
My training in psych is what I got in a couple of courses at college, and CMEs as an EMT. I don’t make myself out to be an expert in the field, but I do have observations and opinions based on what I have learned. I believe I’m allowed to do that.
I’ve dealt with people with Alzheimers and similar symptoms, including my own mother.
And I’ve seen numerous attempts here on the forum to blame anyone but the person involved/responsible.
I’m sorry the gentleman was injured. Perhaps some good will come of it.
I don’t think we need to blame anyone in the pursuit of a better solution. In fact, I think the “blame game” is many times used as a way to avoid dealing with the situation completely.
Overmod
That’s obvious enough almost to require no answer – someone almost died. And for precisely the sort of short sight in design engineering that calls for elimination of defects.
Is it an engineering defect if someone uses the product improperly?
Why was his scooter in a position that it could drop a wheel in the flangeway? The road crosses the tracks at very nearly ninety degrees. He could have been across the tracks and in the clear in ten or fifteen seconds.
Thousands of people cross tracks on similar installations every day. With no ill effects. What made this one different? Would flange guards have actually made a difference?
I think flange fillers could have prevented the hangup. Total flush flange fillers seem to be in use, but also limited in some ways. But the main issue is the width and depth of the flangeway. The values of width and depth for best train operation seem to be inconflict with the values of those who must cross the flangeway gap.
What pressure level should the ‘flange filler’ respond to? A sideways 's
Because it’s a false analogy. If the property owner has part of his land condemned for a public pool, with an agreement with the municipality (backed up in this case with Federal legislation saying he is not liable) – why should he be responsible for contributory negligence? I don’t believe there is any agreement-concerned “negligence” on UP’s part: in particular there appears to be no issue with the integrity of the crossing protection or its maintenance, which is the usual railroad contribution in improved crossings.
Even the argument for the absence of ‘pedestrian gates’ would fail here, as it would be the municipality’s responsibility to provide them. UP is not responsible to maintain something that is not there. By extension the same would be true of flangeways fillers – probably is in the case of the Illinois crossings if you check, and will likely be what’s written into amended crossing agreements when flange fillers become specified, as I think is likely if this becomes a high-profile safety incident.
Again: fair is when the municipality pays for the costs to install, and Union Pacific takes up maintenance at the request of the municipality. I do not know the specifics of ‘who pays’ for running maintenance and replacement of gates, masts and other equipment; there will be a cost for the filler strips, adhesive, install jigs etc. and there will also be time and labor cost for the strips. That would be carried precisely as for the other 'safety improveme
The railroad did not ask for the road crossing, and derives vanishingly slight real benefit from it; in fact I could have gone a bit further and said ‘public pool in which the property owner could not swim freely or even sunbathe around’ for some reason. It was a ‘public pool’ because it is a metaphor for a public road, a very different thing from, say, a country-club pool built via eminent domain of some kind.
You, on the other hand, misinterpret the applicability of ‘attractive nuisance’ in this context. The duty of care there is to preclude the access itself, not to make it ‘safe’ for trespassers to engage in various behavior once there that might pose risk to them – lifeguards, pool intrusion alarms, non-skid decking, etc. I am reasonably sure that UP would happily eliminate the ‘attractive nuisance’ of flangeways the way it does everywhere else there is flange clearance: by at least good-faith preventing public access to its flangeways completely.
None of this, of course, rules out UP at least giving the impression of being a ‘good citizen’ by accepting, or even proactively requesting the required FRA waiver for, installation of some form of flangeways filler at pedestrian-enabled crossings. If I were more cynical I could easily imagine Lodi having Jim Thorpe-style ‘activist’ city management employees who would try punitive action of various kinds if UP fails to engage in what they consider appropriate ‘citizenship’ or whatever … we are soon, I think, about to see this sort of practice in a different context in Kansas.
In your ideological** zeal to defend railroads from criticism of socially irresponsible behavior, you strain the analogy beyond reason with more logorrhea.
** Your use of the term activist in a pejorative manner exposes your real views.
Let me be clearer. I am not contending that existing laws or precedents are that railroads are responsible for the construction of safe ROWs and crossings. What I actually believe should be the goal would be to have ROWs nationalized and have railroads be free to do what they could do best: provide transportation as private entities, the same as trucks on public highways or airfreight on public airlanes - level the playing field. The compensation for the ROW land would inject capital into their coffers as well as free them from maintenance. The public would benefit from modern, safer state-of-the-art ROWs (and potentially excellent passenger rail service) by a logical rationalization of routes based on competiition in providing excellence in services, rather than an inefficient form of competition constrained by historical routes. Railroads would be aloowed to become integrated transportation companies as Ken Greyhounds has hinted at, rail, road, air and water.
Aside from that old ‘left-wing’ trope of trying, again and again now, or resorting to insults when your own arguments are failing… you have not yet established why railroads, rather than municipalities or public-road agencies, should be forced or shamed into assuming ‘socially responsible’ liability for this. We may have to ‘agree to disagree’ perhaps with the key difference that I won’t pretend to mock your ideology on supposedly self-determinedly ‘self-evident’ grounds.
[quote]
Let me be clearer. I am not contending that existing laws or precedents are that railroads are responsible for the construction of safe ROWs and crossings. What I actually believe should be the goal would be to have ROWs nationalized and have railroads be free to do what they could do best: provide transportation as private entities, the same as trucks on public highways.
[quote]
This has, in fact, been proposed (with substantial justification, in my opinion) at least since the days of Federal control. I grew up with Kneiling’s ‘iron ocean’ proposals, back in the days when there was still far more ‘route diversity’ to optimize what you propose, and while there are certainly arguments from other ‘traditions and tribes’ about the sorts of operational problems and distortions in either public or private ownership or administration of 'rail infrastructure entities … expect ‘The Permanent Way’ stuff to be trotted out ad nauseam as if it actually governed American practice of the idea … I do think it is a solution with great objective merit.
[quote]
… compensation for the ROW land would inject capital into their coffers as well as free them from maintenance. The public would benefit from modern, s
You clearly do not have even an introductory psychology course level of understanding
Your use of the pronoun ‘you’ does tend to personalize the exchange, and the attempt to fault the level of education of your adversaries seems a clear attempt to attack their intelligence. Put the two together, and you’ll see that I am right. Perhaps this is something you are doing and not even aware of? This isn’t the first time , others have mentioned this to you before.
The ‘problem’ here is much the same as would be installing a bunch of Riggatrons in small communities nationwide to see if the tiny risk of enormous calamity might at some point develop.
I think there is now enormous practical evidence, both pro and con, from current implementations of flangeway protection. Data from Illinois alone, where there may be a statistically-significant number of crossings, ought to be indicative ‘enough’ of most of the objective hazards and failure modes. The only real ‘solution’ for weird complex-interaction derailments will be either liability caps combined with ‘mandatorily-regulated’ cost of insurance (like Price-Anderson or Amtrak’s ‘our-fault’) or some sort of arrangement for pooled remediation with local authorities … watch the screaming and recall efforts and vicious campaigning that would follow revelation of that!
As I said in the other thread, the real solution to this issue lies in Federal legislation that specifically mandates the installation of fillers, and ideally addresses the issue of ‘who pays’ definitively. My opinion is against unfunded mandates as a general rule, on principle, so I would naturally prefer to see the installation and marginal repair and maintenance costs paid out of tax revenue or (in the case of railroads) deductible without positive limit from any local, or perhaps income, taxes they would otherwise owe. But having the thing nailed down is key to getting approved designs in place, and funds allocated to put them in, before the situation with flangeway trapping comes up again.
None of this of course interfering with the expeditious legal action to compel scooter and wheelchair makers to revise their defective designs wherever they are used in this context, a
I’d been wondering about product recall as well. Another thought was in changing the rules on what qualifies for Medicare reimbursement.
Another line of thought is requring some sort of permit for operating motorized wheelchairs and other mobility devices on public sidewalks and streets. The permit would require passing a simple written test about the rules of the road for such devices. A simple (perhaps draconian) enforcement would be requiring a current permit in order to initiate any lawsuit from injuries received while riding on a public street or sidewalk.
Perhaps you should desist from putting words in others’ mouths. I never said flangeway fillers were in widespread use in Illinois. I commented on their use in at least a few towns along the UPWest line.
No. You like to construct distorted generalizations. To say someone did not appear to have an understanding of an intro college psych class is not a comment on their level of education. I never took a sociology class but I did earn degrees beyond high school. The same is true of many people. Folks with engineering degrees may have a few or many courses in a variety of liberal arts fields. You seem unaware of this for whatever reason.
I think Larry is quite capable of explaining himself without your assistance. And I hold no personal animus towards him. Our difference of opinion is about mental states in emergency situations.
You seem to think I am being critical when I was not. My point is that there are a substantial enough number of them there, very likely installed long enough in severe enough weather to give reasonable ‘statistically-valid’ data on the issues associated with flangeway filling, including derailment risk or conditions that might reasonably predispose to derailment risk (not quite the same thing, but in my opinion as important to record and track).
Frankly I thought the case for flangeway filling at crossings had been ‘settled science’ years ago, with cost and liability assumption being the principal ‘real’ barriers to its adoption. I still think much as you probably do that they should be a default in new construction, possibly in new street construction in general. The real issue remains whether the cost for the additional protection should be borne by those incrementally protected, as would be ‘fair’, or whether the government should mandate this additional protection ‘free’ to the public, which is certainly expedient and, in a sense, ‘just’.
I do not conclude that the railroad should pay for the flangeway fillers or that anyone would expect them to. I have no idea what legal agreements govern such details of providing grade crossings for the public roads and sidewalks.
As we have seen, if a disabled user of a mobility scooter is able to get a wheel stuck in a deep flangeway, and is also unable to get off and clear of the scooter because of their disability, you have a life threatening situation. It is simply unacceptable, and all such crossings with deep open flangeways should be immediately closed to all devices that have wheels than can get trapped in the deep flangeways. The danger is real and obvious. It also extends to bicycles because their speed is capable of killing a rider if they are launched during a wheel snagging in a deep flangeway.
The ultimate goal has been to totally fill the flangeway flush with the rail top. Then the train just rolls over that flange interference and compresses it in order to pass. When the train passes, the flangeway rebounds, and is once again filled flush with the rail head. But this ideal goal seems to be not fully attainable for some reason, and also, it may not be allowed by the FRA for some reason.
However, aside from the objective of totally filling the flangeway flush with the rail top, the problem has already been practically solved by eliminating the deep groove that extends far below the actual flange space. The deep groove extends down to the top of the rail base, whereas the flange space only extends down about one inch from the top of the rail.
