6 ms·

Tech companies ignore pleas on rail safety

31 points by Svip 7y ago

JustSomeNobody 7y ago
> Adding information on railroad crossings to mobile apps would “provide road users with additional safety cues and ... reduce the likelihood of crashes,” the NTSB wrote... I know this is going to sound like victim blaming, but are RR crossings really that hard to see? Surely the apps are not the problem, but maybe from the people racing the train and losing? And I get that some crossings might be hard to see until you're right there, but how is this tech's problem and not an infrastructure problem? IOW, if I wasn't using a maps app with added information, I would be in more danger, so why doesn't infrastructure fix it?
- DangitBobby 7y ago
  Yeah, this is ridiculous. Watch the damn road. Not everything bad that happens to someone is someone else's fault. You can be the victim of your own actions.
- AJ007 7y ago
  There is no shortage of videos of people in cars pulling in front of visible trains. Drivers stop over rail tracks all of the time. Frequently pedestrians hit by trains, excluding suicides, have earphones in.
jws 7y ago
Strange article. It assumes that somehow having rail crossings marked on navigation systems would reduce motor vehicle to train accidents, if only the tech companies would implement it. Do drivers really watch their maps to see upcoming hazards? I just glance once in a while to see how far until my next turn and which direction it will be.
- andrewnicolalde 7y ago
  Perhaps it would be nice if I got a small verbal audio cue from whatever navigation app I was using a minute or so before reaching the rail crossing. We already get these notifications when it's time to make a turn and rail crossings aren't so frequent as to make such warnings annoying.
- groundlogic 7y ago
  I could certainly imagine that if e.g. Waze warned about railroad crossings that it could prevent some small percentage of almost sleeping drivers/truckers getting hit. It's a numbers game. 999/1000 will be watching just fine without a warning from their navigation app; that warning might bring awareness to 999.8/1000 or so. Or something like that. That could result in a pretty dramatic decrease of accidents. This seems like a no-brainer to me - they should add a (visual) warning about this.
  - Arnt 7y ago
    Is there a visual warning already? Like this for example (from Germany)? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Blinklicht_mit_Halbschranke%2C_BO_1961.svg/800px-Blinklicht_mit_Halbschranke%2C_BO_1961.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Bl...
    - groundlogic 7y ago
      Sure, there are obviously visual warnings in real life, like that. Pretty sure that kind of thing is universal. I'm talking about something that would pop on the Waze display, like 20 seconds ahead of reaching the crossing.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - Arnt 7y ago
        Why would this be an improvement? It encourages taking drivers' eyes off the road. Can you offer an argument that its value is such that that's a net improvement?
envy2 7y ago
I understand the motivation behind the NTSB recommendation, but think I net out siding with the app developers here. The last time I checked, the overwhelming majority of active at-grade rail crossings are well-marked (and usually controlled by lights/gates in populated areas). Adding potentially confusing clutter to apps feels like it may in fact compound the problem if people mistake the tracks for roads/intersections. Obviously, if apps are routing people down rail tracks, that's a big problem, but it doesn't seem to have been what happened here. Expecting developers to try to solve for every possible dumb human scenario doesn't end well.
maxerickson 7y ago
Many of these got added to OpenStreetMap at that time. OSMAnd will announce them, the last time (years ago) I used it while driving over some the implementation left a bit to be desired, it announced them about 10 times. Here's a quick query visualizing just how many there are: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Ls7 http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Ls7 (move the map and click "Run" to look at other areas) I think the FRA data includes information about what type of control each crossing has. It wouldn't be a huge project to highlight the less controlled crossings that are on higher speed and higher traffic routes.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Here's the FRA's interactive map: https://fragis.fra.dot.gov/GISFRASafety/ https://fragis.fra.dot.gov/GISFRASafety/ They have extended information about the crossings.
nesadi 7y ago
Do US railway crossings not have clear markings and raisable barriers? I find it hard to have sympathy for people who drive across railway crossing without actually looking at the road while driving a dangerous vehicle like a car.
- Svip 7y ago
  Some of it is people driving down the railway track. It may be confusing at night (all the incidents I could find mentioned in the bottom happened at night), particularly if there is a road junction immediately following the railway crossing, that you were supposed to turn on. Then an indicator to 'cross the railway, and then turn right' would be nice. Although, I wonder whether US railway crossings can be hard to see at night.
  - mhandley 7y ago
    Old-style railway crossings often included gates that closed across the tracks to prevent this happening. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3VF4hWvjC3g/maxresdefault.jpg http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3VF4hWvjC3g/maxresdefault.jpg Is it really that hard for the railways to fix this problem with better modern automated gates?
    - Svip 7y ago
      I've only seen those kinds of gates in Europe. Mind, I have not seen all US railway crossings, but I have seen a few, and none of them had gates like that. Plus, I think there is too little money in the railway network's budget to implement those gates, so asking navigation apps to do it for them is the cheap option.
      - aaronmgdr 7y ago
        Most of the ones I have seen have gates (I'm in the US)
        kd5bjo 7y ago
marcinzm 7y ago
For reference, this is the crash referenced by the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Oxnard_train_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Oxnard_train_derailment Apparently a driver drove onto the railroad tracks after confusing them with a road at night.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  > Funding, however, remained unavailable in Ventura County for the estimated $35 million grade separation project. That's the key line in that article. Adding it to Google Maps doesn't fix this. Putting up a sign that says "No idiot, don't turn here" doesn't fix this. Better driver training doesn't fix this. Better working time rules (the driver was "severely fatigued") doesn't fix this. Grade separation fixes this.
  - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
    According to the Bureau of Transportation, there are 211,631 at grade crossings in the US [1]. At $35 million a crossing, that's $7.4 trillion. [1] https://www.bts.gov/content/highway-rail-grade-crossings-type https://www.bts.gov/content/highway-rail-grade-crossings-typ...
- userbinator 7y ago
  ...and then got stuck on the tracks: The truck driver is reported to have driven along the tracks having turned too early before the intersection at Fifth Street and then having gotten his wheels jammed in the tracks from which he was then unable to extricate it. It's a little surprising, since you'd think a truck would be high enough to clear the rails, or that he would immediately realise and try to reverse back into the intersection, but I guess panic set in.
  - coryrc 7y ago
    They're bedded in gravel, wouldn't take much to bottom out on the tracks.
crazygringo 7y ago
I'm so confused. How on earth is a maps app having railroad crossing markings going to save lives? A driver needs to stop at a railroad crossing just like they do at a red light or stop sign. If a driver is ignoring any of these, I really don't see how an app is going to help. Or conversely, if a crossing is somehow not well-marked on the road then that's deep negligence on the part of the transportation department and it needs to be fixed -- it has nothing to do with apps. (All the crossings I know have a closed gate and flashing lights, although I understand this might vary locally.)
- Shivetya 7y ago
  a) they all have money, lots and lots of money b) they have been proven to not having taken action even though "safety advocates" have asked for years. c) as such they are ripe for some cherry picked court to fine them There are many many warnings we encounter in daily life which only exist to protect not just the consumer but the manufacturer or service provider from unscrupulous lawyers and political officials who would otherwise exploit the situation. no snark intended, however we live in a society where someone else is always to blame and usually someone with money which can be taken by penalty or forfeiture in trial or settlement.
- why-el 7y ago
  I think there is a middle ground. Apps could announce the upcoming railroad crossing just like they do with a left/right turn. Somewhat of a silly example, but if there is a river at the end of a road and your only option is a left or a right, the app will not help stop you for driving the car into the river, but the instruction to go right or left does (albeit accidentally) help you avoid that. I don't see why it won't do the same with rail crossings. Although you should focus on road signs more than you do the app, there could be a dangerous situation in which the app says "make a left turn at the light", but before reaching the light there is a railroad crossing. Of course you need to stop at that, but the app can enhance the situation but treating it like another instruction. I see no problem here but an overall safety enhancement.
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
mschuster91 7y ago
Putting info about railroad crossing into maps is bad, period. People must be forced to look on the damn road instead of putting everything including speed limits in their navigation system - I would actually outlaw displaying everything that can be seen with your eyes in navigation apps. Otherwise such stories or "tin can opener bridges" are not ever going to disappear. If you're wondering about the bridge: https://youtu.be/u_9rWH0p43A https://youtu.be/u_9rWH0p43A There are literally flashing lights and a direction "OVERHEIGHT" blinking, and people are too focused on their navs/phones to notice it.
- ghaff 7y ago
  In all fairness, in Boston/Cambridge, students have been ripping open the top of rental trucks on Storrow and Memorial Drives since long before there were navs/phones. (Admittedly, the warnings didn't used to be as prominent as they are today.)
creato 7y ago
How often does this happen? Not all 270 railroad crossing deaths are similar to the specific accident mentioned caused by confusing a railroad crossing with a road. At the same time, there must be billions of railroad crossings by vehicles every year. If map apps do anything to announce/mention railroad crossings, I would expect there to be some number of people that make this mistake because of confusion about the announcement/indication instead of preventing it.
rplst8 7y ago
How about people just pay more attention when they drive their 3000 lbs hunk of murder metal?

31 points by Svip 7y ago

> Adding information on railroad crossings to mobile apps would “provide road users with additional safety cues and ... reduce the likelihood of crashes,” the NTSB wrote... I know this is going to sound like victim blaming, but are RR crossings really that hard to see? Surely the apps are not the problem, but maybe from the people racing the train and losing? And I get that some crossings might be hard to see until you're right there, but how is this tech's problem and not an infrastructure problem? IOW, if I wasn't using a maps app with added information, I would be in more danger, so why doesn't infrastructure fix it?

DangitBobby 7y ago
Yeah, this is ridiculous. Watch the damn road. Not everything bad that happens to someone is someone else's fault. You can be the victim of your own actions.
AJ007 7y ago
There is no shortage of videos of people in cars pulling in front of visible trains. Drivers stop over rail tracks all of the time. Frequently pedestrians hit by trains, excluding suicides, have earphones in.

jws 7y ago

Strange article. It assumes that somehow having rail crossings marked on navigation systems would reduce motor vehicle to train accidents, if only the tech companies would implement it. Do drivers really watch their maps to see upcoming hazards? I just glance once in a while to see how far until my next turn and which direction it will be.

andrewnicolalde 7y ago
Perhaps it would be nice if I got a small verbal audio cue from whatever navigation app I was using a minute or so before reaching the rail crossing. We already get these notifications when it's time to make a turn and rail crossings aren't so frequent as to make such warnings annoying.
groundlogic 7y ago
I could certainly imagine that if e.g. Waze warned about railroad crossings that it could prevent some small percentage of almost sleeping drivers/truckers getting hit. It's a numbers game. 999/1000 will be watching just fine without a warning from their navigation app; that warning might bring awareness to 999.8/1000 or so. Or something like that. That could result in a pretty dramatic decrease of accidents. This seems like a no-brainer to me - they should add a (visual) warning about this.
- Arnt 7y ago
  Is there a visual warning already? Like this for example (from Germany)? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Blinklicht_mit_Halbschranke%2C_BO_1961.svg/800px-Blinklicht_mit_Halbschranke%2C_BO_1961.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Bl...
  - groundlogic 7y ago
    Sure, there are obviously visual warnings in real life, like that. Pretty sure that kind of thing is universal. I'm talking about something that would pop on the Waze display, like 20 seconds ahead of reaching the crossing.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Arnt 7y ago
      Why would this be an improvement? It encourages taking drivers' eyes off the road. Can you offer an argument that its value is such that that's a net improvement?

envy2 7y ago

I understand the motivation behind the NTSB recommendation, but think I net out siding with the app developers here. The last time I checked, the overwhelming majority of active at-grade rail crossings are well-marked (and usually controlled by lights/gates in populated areas). Adding potentially confusing clutter to apps feels like it may in fact compound the problem if people mistake the tracks for roads/intersections. Obviously, if apps are routing people down rail tracks, that's a big problem, but it doesn't seem to have been what happened here. Expecting developers to try to solve for every possible dumb human scenario doesn't end well.

maxerickson 7y ago

Many of these got added to OpenStreetMap at that time. OSMAnd will announce them, the last time (years ago) I used it while driving over some the implementation left a bit to be desired, it announced them about 10 times. Here's a quick query visualizing just how many there are: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Ls7 http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Ls7 (move the map and click "Run" to look at other areas) I think the FRA data includes information about what type of control each crossing has. It wouldn't be a huge project to highlight the less controlled crossings that are on higher speed and higher traffic routes.

maxerickson 7y ago
Here's the FRA's interactive map: https://fragis.fra.dot.gov/GISFRASafety/ https://fragis.fra.dot.gov/GISFRASafety/ They have extended information about the crossings.

nesadi 7y ago

Do US railway crossings not have clear markings and raisable barriers? I find it hard to have sympathy for people who drive across railway crossing without actually looking at the road while driving a dangerous vehicle like a car.

Svip 7y ago
Some of it is people driving down the railway track. It may be confusing at night (all the incidents I could find mentioned in the bottom happened at night), particularly if there is a road junction immediately following the railway crossing, that you were supposed to turn on. Then an indicator to 'cross the railway, and then turn right' would be nice. Although, I wonder whether US railway crossings can be hard to see at night.
- mhandley 7y ago
  Old-style railway crossings often included gates that closed across the tracks to prevent this happening. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3VF4hWvjC3g/maxresdefault.jpg http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3VF4hWvjC3g/maxresdefault.jpg Is it really that hard for the railways to fix this problem with better modern automated gates?
  - Svip 7y ago
    I've only seen those kinds of gates in Europe. Mind, I have not seen all US railway crossings, but I have seen a few, and none of them had gates like that. Plus, I think there is too little money in the railway network's budget to implement those gates, so asking navigation apps to do it for them is the cheap option.
    - aaronmgdr 7y ago
      Most of the ones I have seen have gates (I'm in the US)
      - kd5bjo 7y ago

marcinzm 7y ago

For reference, this is the crash referenced by the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Oxnard_train_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Oxnard_train_derailment Apparently a driver drove onto the railroad tracks after confusing them with a road at night.

tialaramex 7y ago
> Funding, however, remained unavailable in Ventura County for the estimated $35 million grade separation project. That's the key line in that article. Adding it to Google Maps doesn't fix this. Putting up a sign that says "No idiot, don't turn here" doesn't fix this. Better driver training doesn't fix this. Better working time rules (the driver was "severely fatigued") doesn't fix this. Grade separation fixes this.
- ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
  According to the Bureau of Transportation, there are 211,631 at grade crossings in the US [1]. At $35 million a crossing, that's $7.4 trillion. [1] https://www.bts.gov/content/highway-rail-grade-crossings-type https://www.bts.gov/content/highway-rail-grade-crossings-typ...
userbinator 7y ago
...and then got stuck on the tracks: The truck driver is reported to have driven along the tracks having turned too early before the intersection at Fifth Street and then having gotten his wheels jammed in the tracks from which he was then unable to extricate it. It's a little surprising, since you'd think a truck would be high enough to clear the rails, or that he would immediately realise and try to reverse back into the intersection, but I guess panic set in.
- coryrc 7y ago
  They're bedded in gravel, wouldn't take much to bottom out on the tracks.

crazygringo 7y ago

I'm so confused. How on earth is a maps app having railroad crossing markings going to save lives? A driver needs to stop at a railroad crossing just like they do at a red light or stop sign. If a driver is ignoring any of these, I really don't see how an app is going to help. Or conversely, if a crossing is somehow not well-marked on the road then that's deep negligence on the part of the transportation department and it needs to be fixed -- it has nothing to do with apps. (All the crossings I know have a closed gate and flashing lights, although I understand this might vary locally.)

Shivetya 7y ago
a) they all have money, lots and lots of money b) they have been proven to not having taken action even though "safety advocates" have asked for years. c) as such they are ripe for some cherry picked court to fine them There are many many warnings we encounter in daily life which only exist to protect not just the consumer but the manufacturer or service provider from unscrupulous lawyers and political officials who would otherwise exploit the situation. no snark intended, however we live in a society where someone else is always to blame and usually someone with money which can be taken by penalty or forfeiture in trial or settlement.
why-el 7y ago
I think there is a middle ground. Apps could announce the upcoming railroad crossing just like they do with a left/right turn. Somewhat of a silly example, but if there is a river at the end of a road and your only option is a left or a right, the app will not help stop you for driving the car into the river, but the instruction to go right or left does (albeit accidentally) help you avoid that. I don't see why it won't do the same with rail crossings. Although you should focus on road signs more than you do the app, there could be a dangerous situation in which the app says "make a left turn at the light", but before reaching the light there is a railroad crossing. Of course you need to stop at that, but the app can enhance the situation but treating it like another instruction. I see no problem here but an overall safety enhancement.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago

mschuster91 7y ago

Putting info about railroad crossing into maps is bad, period. People must be forced to look on the damn road instead of putting everything including speed limits in their navigation system - I would actually outlaw displaying everything that can be seen with your eyes in navigation apps. Otherwise such stories or "tin can opener bridges" are not ever going to disappear. If you're wondering about the bridge: https://youtu.be/u_9rWH0p43A https://youtu.be/u_9rWH0p43A There are literally flashing lights and a direction "OVERHEIGHT" blinking, and people are too focused on their navs/phones to notice it.

ghaff 7y ago
In all fairness, in Boston/Cambridge, students have been ripping open the top of rental trucks on Storrow and Memorial Drives since long before there were navs/phones. (Admittedly, the warnings didn't used to be as prominent as they are today.)

creato 7y ago

How often does this happen? Not all 270 railroad crossing deaths are similar to the specific accident mentioned caused by confusing a railroad crossing with a road. At the same time, there must be billions of railroad crossings by vehicles every year. If map apps do anything to announce/mention railroad crossings, I would expect there to be some number of people that make this mistake because of confusion about the announcement/indication instead of preventing it.

rplst8 7y ago

How about people just pay more attention when they drive their 3000 lbs hunk of murder metal?