3 ms·
Add mecsred notes, this disaster illustrates the risks of rail, especially with hazardous cargo (which could have been carried far more safely by pipeline!) but
by cperciva 4y ago
Add mecsred notes, this disaster illustrates the risks of rail, especially with hazardous cargo (which could have been carried far more safely by pipeline!) but it also illustrates an over reliance on humans. A zero-human-drivers railway would have (a) had automatically locking trains rather than relying on humans to hit the breaks, and (b) more remote monitoring to detect if anything went wrong.
- lmm 4y agoA zero-human-drivers railway sounds extremely vulnerable to "the train is on fire, the fire brigade shut off the generator, which it turns out the brakes depended on" which is the essence of what happened there.
- cperciva 4y agoThat's absolutely a problem if a train designed to have a driver doesn't have one (which is what happened here). If trains were designed to not need drivers, this wouldn't have happened, because (a) enough mechanical brakes would have been applied automatically, (b) the engine fire would have been detected and reported automatically, and (c) if the brakes failed there would have been an immediate alarm when the train started moving.