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Why wouldn't a train engineer of a train that crashed get a lawyer in a situation such as this?
Even if completely innocent of any wrong doing, something happened beyond his control, it still seems a prudent thing to do in today's "l'm gonna sue" society that we have now. There were hundreds of people on that train, all of them a potential lawsuit. A lawyer will protect your interests.
i.e It doesn't mean he did anything wrong. People should wait for facts instead of witch hunting.
I don't think we will ever know the full truth regarding the operator. At the end of the day, the only one that knows what happened is the operator, and it's all very convenient to blame a concussion for lack of memory. . .but they will still have to live with the damage done.
Unfortunately, your politicians would rather spend money on things
like overthrowing the Ukraine and trying to remake the Middle East,
and build more nuclear submarines than do something as beneficial
as bringing our mass transit system into the 21st century.
So many conclusions that one can jump too; let's just let the investigators do their thing.
After all there's one other thing that would be kept quiet too: The engine (which was an older unit) had a mechanical failure with its braking. Amtrak has some very old equipment still in operation, mechanical problems can be a player too.
The other conclusions like texting, of course, can be the reason too. But we don't know that yet, and last I recall America had a concept of "innocent until proven guilty".
With the lynch mob mentality against this guy, of course he's going to lawyer up.
Like I mentioned before, the section if straight track had a much higher speed limit. Like cars on the highway, if the limit is 80 most are gonna do 90-95.
No, no, no, and no. Like you mentioned before, nothing. This is railroad track, not interstate highway. If the limit in the curve was 50 mph then there was likely a speed limit in effect on the straight leading to it, to allow for reasonable deceleration of a 200 ton passenger train. So... anything over ... 70 or 80 would be excessive, and not just for the 85th percentile, for everybody! Nothing about this looks deliberate... you had me going with the CEO... you did appear to imply it was the Amtrack CEO that died... 'the CEO Rachel'... ... couldja be just a little more specific??? If it was the Amtrack CEO I might have thought hmmm. Freaky, but just about remotely possible if he wanted to make a statement. Deliberate like the German co-pilot? A curve??? A siding maybe. Would a train engineer still text after that crash that killed that other engineer and brought the whole issue of train operator texting to the rest of the world? Certainly not.
Last edited by Leisesturm; 05-14-2015 at 11:03 AM..
Unfortunately, your politicians would rather spend money on things
like overthrowing the Ukraine and trying to remake the Middle East,
and build more nuclear submarines than do something as beneficial
as bringing our mass transit system into the 21st century.
Very true- if they would quit wasting billions or even trillions on these overseas escapades, we could spend that money here at home to really upgrade all of our infrastructure. Apparently those in power have no interest in making things better or safer here at home.
I believe there's a "dead man switch" on trains that require constant foot pressure for the train to run. Maybe it's time for car technology advances to cross over? Example, the system that reads eye movements etc to discern if the driver is drowsy?
There is a 'dead man throttle' and it requires constant hand pressure for the train to run. Keeping downward hand pressure while asleep (or dead) is a lot harder to accomplish than downward foot pressure. Someone said it was 10 minutes since the last stop for that train. I am having trouble picturing someone falling nearly comatose in just 10 minutes, just enough weight on their right hand (not arm) so as to keep the train in motion. Drugs? Some really heavy drama with the wife or girlfriend (or both). Dude had things on his mind. Was on automatic pilot. Functioning, but not functioning. But, yes, some form of drowsiness detection should be built into modern rail equipment. Other things too... in 2015 there isn't any excuse for having at least basic over-speed warning. Maybe it can't stop the train, but if enough buzzing or ringing were triggered by an over-speed situation ( and I'd say 106 in a 70, soon to be 50 qualifies) early enough to be useful, that would be a positive development. I'm confident there will be some hard looks at the level of technology that is being used to transport large numbers of people by rail systems after this crash.
It is very telling that Obamacare is the only example of Liberal Democrat fiscal excess that Republicans can name when pressed. Obamacare has not wasted trillions of dollars... yet. Mere billions at this point. To see real waste (in the trillions of dollars) you have to look at the long Republican record of tax breaks for the wealthy, overseas wars, and drilling incentives for oil companies.
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