Comments on: Two trains are going to crash. What do you do?

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 01:16:35 +0000

I salute another “Red For Danger” fan! That book probably accounts by itself for my interest in railways: certainly I got interested in signalling from it, and began hanging around local (Stockport) signal boxes. (And discovered that one of our local relief signalmen had helped to clear up the wreckage of the Harrow & Wealdstone collision as a National Serviceman.)

There was a terrific play in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe a few years back entitled Charlie Victor Romeo, which was taken from Cockpit Voice Recorder transcripts of air accidents. http://www.charlievictorromeo.com/

By: John P

John P — Mon, 28 May 2012 08:05:41 +0000

I don’t know about rail, but I understand that air accident investigators have pretty draconian powers at their disposal. IIRC, they can enter/search/seize without a warrant, demand assistance from anyone, talk to anyone they like. Of course, they have to justify the use of these powers within the context of the investigation otherwise they are deep in it. Just thought I’d chuck that bit of trivia in.

Actually, here’s an interesting link from Google. A memo between the chief fire officers and the AAIB which gives a bit more detail.
http://www.cfoa.org.uk/download/20747

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:40:22 +0000

That’s a valid point. In past times when a signal failed they’d do “stop-and-proceed” working with trains running through the affected area at walking pace, which meant there were delays, but thinks kept moving. Nowadays everything is at a complete standstill until the problem is fixed.

By: PaulE

PaulE — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:41:01 +0000

It can be frustrating, though, when the procedures default to the safest system of all – not to run any trains.

Probably the most dangerous thinking is to assume the system is perfect. The unsinkable ship isn’t.

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:03:57 +0000

And the lessons learned from those unprecedented failures are the reason rail and air are so safe compared with other means of travel.

By: Serdar

Serdar — Thu, 24 May 2012 02:31:50 +0000

I’m interested in the stories behind air accidents for the same reason – there’s almost always a story there about the failure of a whole series of interlocking systems in some tiny, unprecedented way.