Comment by bombcar
18 hours ago
Apparently they have the automated systems, but they were not working, so they were under human operating rules.
Which, in the USA at least, severely limits speed you're allowed to use (because once the only thing between you and gory death is a human, eventually that human makes a mistake).
They told the train to drive "as normal". This was a controller mistake as the procedure says they could only drive in visual/slow mode.
Same mistake was made with other train and the driver replied that that was not allowed, and the operator corrected accordingly. But the driver of the train that crashed didn't raise the issue.
As it looks now the controller made a mistake when taking over manual control of the segment after systems failure ("continue as normal" vs "continue slow"). The train driver probably should have also known they should not drive at normal speed without safeties in the segment, but I guess they trusted control had cleared previous trains.
Between 10-20 minutes control room did not realize a train was approaching an occupied section where the other train was holding on a red track signal.
Human error but signals serious deficiencies at protocol, oversight etc. In control room.
Yeah, and seems like the automated systems have been failing a lot recently. Or that they didnt correctly designed them for this case.
This means the health of those systems and mantinability by whoever was responsible hasn't been well done.
I agree with you, once the only thing and death is a human, nothing can be trusted, humans will make mistakes.
I've always thought that a train lacking PTC on the rails should be able to "deploy" a small car-sized thing that runs ahead of it at the same speed but 2x current stopping distance away from the locomotive - if it stops communicating or detects any anomalies the train goes into emergency.