3 ms·

Children playing on the track ahead. Fallen tree across the tracks. Moist leaves on the rails. Road crossing not clear. Probably a bunch of more nuanced things

by vacri 11y ago

Children playing on the track ahead. Fallen tree across the tracks. Moist leaves on the rails. Road crossing not clear. Probably a bunch of more nuanced things that someone familiar with driving trains would know. You need a wide array of failsafed sensors to replace a human doing all of these. Certainly more than the $100 you suggest. Hell, in my state, the electronic comms for trains get adversely affected by caterpillar plagues from time to time.

CamperBob2 11y ago
Children playing on the track ahead. Fallen tree across the tracks. I think we're talking about very different vehicles here. These are avoidable hazards on the road. There is nothing a train driver can do except fill out the necessary paperwork afterwards, and likely spend some time on a therapist's couch.
- vacri 11y ago
  > There is nothing a train driver can do Not even sound a horn to help alert the kids? Start slowing the train to give the kids more time to alert and escape, or reduce damage to the train and reduce chance of derailment in the case of the tree? Trains don't stop on a dime, but neither do they take a mile of runway. I've been on a passenger train in the US South that had to do an emergency stop, and it stopped within it's own length.
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    That train wasn't going very fast. It's close to 1700m for a train travelling at 125mph (the fastest allowed with conventional signalling in Britain).
    - vacri 11y ago
      Not every event that happens uses worst-case data. In any case, while I don't know the actual class of rail where this emergency stop happened, this wiki article[1] suggests that most mainline track in the US is class 4, which allows a max of 80mph for passenger trains. Out of curiosity, why do you mix metric and imperial in the same context? Stopping distance in metric for a speed in imperial? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_speed_limits_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_speed_limits_in_the_Unite...
      - Symbiote 11y ago
        British usage is a mess, they were the units I found. I didn't really think about it. I also can no longer find the table of stopping distances I found this morning. The official rules for driving cars in Britain have the same daft combination of units: https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/media/559afb11ed915d1595000017/the-highway-code-typical-stopping-distances.pdf https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/media/559afb11e...
        gsnedders 11y ago
        FWIW, the British railway still uses miles and chains for measure.
- deleted 11y ago
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by vacri 11y ago

CamperBob2 11y ago

Children playing on the track ahead. Fallen tree across the tracks. I think we're talking about very different vehicles here. These are avoidable hazards on the road. There is nothing a train driver can do except fill out the necessary paperwork afterwards, and likely spend some time on a therapist's couch.

vacri 11y ago
> There is nothing a train driver can do Not even sound a horn to help alert the kids? Start slowing the train to give the kids more time to alert and escape, or reduce damage to the train and reduce chance of derailment in the case of the tree? Trains don't stop on a dime, but neither do they take a mile of runway. I've been on a passenger train in the US South that had to do an emergency stop, and it stopped within it's own length.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  That train wasn't going very fast. It's close to 1700m for a train travelling at 125mph (the fastest allowed with conventional signalling in Britain).
  - vacri 11y ago
    Not every event that happens uses worst-case data. In any case, while I don't know the actual class of rail where this emergency stop happened, this wiki article[1] suggests that most mainline track in the US is class 4, which allows a max of 80mph for passenger trains. Out of curiosity, why do you mix metric and imperial in the same context? Stopping distance in metric for a speed in imperial? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_speed_limits_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_speed_limits_in_the_Unite...
    - Symbiote 11y ago
      British usage is a mess, they were the units I found. I didn't really think about it. I also can no longer find the table of stopping distances I found this morning. The official rules for driving cars in Britain have the same daft combination of units: https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/media/559afb11ed915d1595000017/the-highway-code-typical-stopping-distances.pdf https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/media/559afb11e...
      - gsnedders 11y ago
        FWIW, the British railway still uses miles and chains for measure.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]