Amtrak Train Derailed 7 Dead & Over 200 Injured

[Dalton]

Fox "News" guest suggests that the engineer's sexuality was a factor in the crash. Anyone surprised?

[Borgholio]

Fox "News" guest suggests that the engineer's sexuality was a factor in the crash. Anyone surprised?

Seemingly she was too nuts even for Fox News. She is no longer listed as an active contributor as of just a few hours ago.

[Channel72]

Dammit, Fox is so confusing. It's like, how is a Fox News contributor supposed to make an honest living? It's totally unclear how homophobic you need to be here. Homophobic enough to work for Fox, but not too homophobic, otherwise you get canned.

[Vejut]

Saw a BBC article yesterday morning on it, saying the train had accelerated from 70 to 100 in about 45 seconds, 65 seconds before the crash. Can't find it now, anybody know more? Would point more strongly towards accelerator failure...

here it is:

From the BBC

[Pelranius]

Dammit, Fox is so confusing. It's like, how is a Fox News contributor supposed to make an honest living? It's totally unclear how homophobic you need to be here. Homophobic enough to work for Fox, but not too homophobic, otherwise you get canned.

I think she does mostly radio work nowadays.

[Sea Skimmer]

Saw a BBC article yesterday morning on it, saying the train had accelerated from 70 to 100 in about 45 seconds, 65 seconds before the crash. Can't find it now, anybody know more? Would point more strongly towards accelerator failure...

I would hardly call it strong, not in any useful way with the information at hand anyway. The train has no automatic throttle functions, so any malfunction would have to be some kind of massive wiring flaw, and meanwhile the driver has his own senses, the speedometer, the cab signals and the automatic train control warnings to tell him something is wrong if it was accelerating out of control. And the train breaks did work, as show by the 4mph deceleration just before the train left the rails. No problems have been found with the track side signals; nothing has been said on the locomotive condition. So being caused by mechanical failure would also require major human error to not notice it, or do anything about it.

Meanwhile we now have an FBI investigation into two other trains hit by unknown objects first thought to be rocks, but now suspected to have been bullets within a half hour of the crash, and unknown object strikes on the cab of the derailed locomotive, and one conductor saying they heard the train driver talking to another driver saying he'd been hit just before the crash occurred. The driver however doesn't remember anything due to his head wound, one other conductor is still in the hospital too injured to be interviewed, and the third had a radio malfunction at the time. A forth died in the crash.

So far the investigation is only referring to the impacts on the other trains as 'projectiles', and has made no conclusion on if engine 601 was hit at all, though damage to the windshield is visible in photos that could be from strikes. It also could be from the crash, it isn't very clear, and one report claimed a hole was found on the side; any such hole would be too small to easily see in video or photographs.

[Gaidin]

The system was physically installed in fact, but not yet approved for operation due to the FCC holding up approval of its radio operations in Philadelphia. Oh and congress mandated this without providing any money to pay for the estimated 12 billion dollar cost. Yet it funds billions and billions for highways that kill people by the thousands and thousands a year. A project to widen a few miles of I-95 just in Phily is getting more money then Amtrak gets in an entire year for a nationwide service system.

Imagine what would happen if suddenly one day the US congress said every single car and truck in the US must have an active rear end collision prevention system, as handfuls of new production cars do, and that everyone had four years to get this installed on there own dime or the vehicle would become illegal on federal highways. THAT would save more lives by any measure then PTC ever will, but nobody would ever even remotely accept it. Meanwhile federal aid to Amtrak for other purposes has been steadily cut further and further for years now. Amtrak expects it to end completely in the near future. The media is really really pathetic at the moment in its attempt to play 'gotcha'. Meanwhile the media idiots doing the local news coverage in Phily couldn't even figure out one of the cars was smashed to pieces at the center of the unending helicopter feed for over two hours.

So I realize I'm days behind this post, and I only saw another video that brought up a question on this yesterday. But, let's say congress gave us seven years instead of four years to install that rear end collision thing? You know, since that's what the train companies actually had...

And how much can a rear end collision detection system for a single car actually cost compared to a railway control system? One is local area detection by nature not that difficult to pull off, the other is...a helluva lot more complex. The scale seems...off.

[Zaune]

Meanwhile we now have an FBI investigation into two other trains hit by unknown objects first thought to be rocks, but now suspected to have been bullets within a half hour of the crash, and unknown object strikes on the cab of the derailed locomotive, and one conductor saying they heard the train driver talking to another driver saying he'd been hit just before the crash occurred. The driver however doesn't remember anything due to his head wound, one other conductor is still in the hospital too injured to be interviewed, and the third had a radio malfunction at the time. A forth died in the crash.

Is it bad that I'm really hoping they're wrong about the "bullets" theory and this was just good old-fashioned juvenile delinquency that spiralled out of control? The last thing anyone needs is another terrorist threat to assuage with taxpayer-funded security theatre.

[Soontir C'boath]

People throwing rocks or anything they can get their hands on at Amtrak trains in Philly has been happening for decades. It certainly doesn't help that the area the NEC travel through is full of shitholes like Chester. If you look up the retired E60 locomotive, you will find photos where they had put metal grates over the windows.

Anyway, the windows the ACS-64 has were certainly designed with these incidents in mind and from the looks of it, it didn't break, but I guess it was still enough to spook the engineer.

[Simon_Jester]

So I realize I'm days behind this post, and I only saw another video that brought up a question on this yesterday. But, let's say congress gave us seven years instead of four years to install that rear end collision thing? You know, since that's what the train companies actually had...

And how much can a rear end collision detection system for a single car actually cost compared to a railway control system? One is local area detection by nature not that difficult to pull off, the other is...a helluva lot more complex. The scale seems...off.

One rear end collision detector for one car would be cheaper. Buying similar detectors for a hundred million cars would be vastly expensive.

In the case of the control network, the huge advantage making any rail traffic control system cheap relative to similarly complex control systems for cars is that a train runs on specific tracks and in a highly predictable manner. It doesn't need to change lanes, pass other trains that are toodling along in the slow lane, accelerate to keep up with the flow of traffic that's all speeding, or any such thing. All you need is a machine that says "install a radio transmitter at Mile 46 that tells the train that between Mile 47 and Mile 54, the train should NOT exceed 45 miles an hour for ANY reason, no matter what, and to brake accordingly."

The total number of expensive things you need to install is considerable but much less than for cars, because you know exactly what you need the trains to do and you only have to install them at intervals of several miles, along major rail lines. There's no need for a machine that constantly scans the outside world looking to see whether certain conditions have been met in the last 100 milliseconds.

[Gaidin]

One rear end collision detector for one car would be cheaper. Buying similar detectors for a hundred million cars would be vastly expensive.

In the case of the control network, the huge advantage making any rail traffic control system cheap relative to similarly complex control systems for cars is that a train runs on specific tracks and in a highly predictable manner. It doesn't need to change lanes, pass other trains that are toodling along in the slow lane, accelerate to keep up with the flow of traffic that's all speeding, or any such thing. All you need is a machine that says "install a radio transmitter at Mile 46 that tells the train that between Mile 47 and Mile 54, the train should NOT exceed 45 miles an hour for ANY reason, no matter what, and to brake accordingly."

The total number of expensive things you need to install is considerable but much less than for cars, because you know exactly what you need the trains to do and you only have to install them at intervals of several miles, along major rail lines. There's no need for a machine that constantly scans the outside world looking to see whether certain conditions have been met in the last 100 milliseconds.

Yes, the analogy is forcing one company to handle their entire rail network. And then dragging it over for one person to one car, or at most a family to two or three. Uhh...right?

[Simon_Jester]

My point was that putting collision detection on every car is much harder than putting advanced control systems on every railroad.

Your previous post had made me think you disagreed with that statement.

[Gaidin]

My point was that putting collision detection on every car is much harder than putting advanced control systems on every railroad.

Your previous post had made me think you disagreed with that statement.

Oh don't get me wrong. I disagree with the concept of forcing the collision detection on every car.

I'm just questioning the nature of the analogy when in the same vein they make the civilian pay for the electronics and the installation of the electronics. The electronics unless custom designed aren't that expensive, I can say as an electrical engineer I have to search for this crap every couple months for the wireless work I do. That makes the programming and labor of installation the most expensive things, but that's largely covered by the outrageously huge number of people that have to purchase it. But again instead of a company having to deal with a number of small systems that in turn become a large system, we are now dealing with single people dealing with single systems, or single families dealing with at most two to three systems, maybe four. The price difference is outrageous. I'll overestimate it at 150$ to get it into any single vehicle compared to god knows what the train companies are paying to get their systems on their entire lines. How in god's name does this analogy stand up logically?

[Borgholio]

Update - looks like the engineer was NOT using his cell phone before the crash. So...the mystery deepens.