The Class I Railroad version of that is:
“Mistakes are 100% the fault of the employee. Employees will be in serious trouble if they are found to have made mistakes.”
One can easily see how that discourages self-reporting and discussion, and encourages cover-ups.
I should caveat the “mistake” quote referring to mistakes that could cause the failure of a billion dollar rocket launch as opposed to running through a curve at excessive speed. The first can be corrected if the mistake is brought up in a timely manner, where the latter…
Incentivising covers ups is a bad idea either way.
Indeed, when near misses go unreported or are covered up the underlying problem remains, uncorrected. That is until a major incident happens which is impossible to cover up.
The Cascades 501 derailment appears to have been caused by unfamiliarity with the route, but the 188 (Frankfort Jct) derailment was not. I wonder how many previous NEC trains had rounded that curve going too fast for one reason or another (Engineer fatigue, loss of situational awareness, etc).
I am sure they happened, and in a proper safety culture (without fear of massive reprisal) they would have been reported, and maybe something would have been done pre-emptively. Like activating ACSES (PTC) in both directions, instead of just southbound.
I can guarantee you that they (employees) protected themselves before “three-step” or “red zone” was put in place by management. And I would expect even with the exact formality no longer codified in a rule, they still protect themselves. They may be better off. IMO, they seem to take good ideas and turn them into less about actual safety and more about the appearance (I suppose to the FRA and the public) of safety. They become more about being able to hand out “gotcha” type discipline. We have a couple of practices, that if you don’t have your i’s dotted and t’s crossed just right, they’ll be on you like flies on you know what. Yet, if you follow them to the letter, dot the i’s and cross the t’s properly, there are loop holes that can still get the unwary hurt or killed.
There is a safety culture program where I work. Or maybe was, I don’t hear much about it anymore. It started in the mechanical department, was championed by a high level executive and rolled out to the rest of the railroad. It wasn’t supposed to be entirely management led but have input from the employees. It did seem to work, for a while anyway. (My BLE-T division didn’t participate, while other divisions did. [The BLE-T calls their locals, divisions.] There were a couple of reasons. One wa
Wish I knew where I saw the video of a passenger engine change during the days of steam - the train hadn’t stopped yet and a worker was between the tender and first car, working on making the break.
But that was in steam days.
I agree that even without a codified rule today’s workers will take the safe route - largely because it has become a way of doing business because it was codified. When the engineer (or fireman) was almost always in view of the crew members, it was easy to protect, even without a formal procedure. Nowadays a crew member may be well out of sight of (but in radio communication with) the engineer.
We often used hand signals to call for (and drop) three step. The FRA wants it on the radio…
Why yes, yes I do. Good catch, thanks.
For a ‘true’ Safety Culture to be established is has to be a top down undertaking. Unless Senior Management buys in and enforces it on middle and first level management it is an excersize in ‘gotcha’. Having some first level supervisors disciplined for over emphasis on the ‘gotcha factor’ with the rank an file does wonders for employee morale.
Last year one morning, at the Away From Home Terminal, the local low level manager left his door open during the morning conference call, which was on speaker phone. (Being the lowest ranking terminal manager, the office was right next to the crew room.) The division level management leading the conference call was doing just the opposite from what Balt said. They were focusing on a specific rule (while they enforce all, they like to have blitzs on specific ones at times) praising the manager that had the most failures and belittling the one with the lowest failure rate. Even telling those with lower failure rates they need to get more failures.
Of course they didn’t discuss why one manager had so many and the other had so few. One would think the manager who couldn’t find many failures had his people doing things the right way and would be commended for reaching that level. That the one who had so many failures was the one having a problem not “managing” his people properly.
Jeff
Jeff, what a weasel the manager higher up is!
Jeff,
I would not willingly work under such conditions. If I couldn’t trust my boss to have a bit of compassion for those who unwittingly slipped up I would seek other employment. Having been involved in aviation maintenance for over thirty years and just waiting for the FAA to burn you I question why they are so quick to condemn rather than correct.
I suspect the FRA works about the same way as the FAA, and yes I have had moments in which I have had the FAA question my judgement on an issue. Thankfully I prevailed.
I have been a part of those morning ‘conference calls’. The character of the calls depend upon who is conducting the call. I have also been in a position to overhear some of the senior management conference calls - the two are similar i
Probably a significant part of the problem doesn’t involve safety at all.
All too often, people seem to have a need to be superior. It’s not limited to any one discipline. Sometimes it’s a matter of “we’re management, and you’re not.”
It could probably be considered a form of bullying, although it’s not always obvious as such.
Clearly, if a true safety culture is to exist, this adversarial environment can not be.
FRA has a voluntary pilot program like this called the “confidential close call reporting system”, see https://www.fra.dot.gov/c3rs. At present, the main participants are Amtrak and some commuter roads. The Strasburg RR (a tourist/short line freight road) is also a participant.