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| Re: How Railroad Could Have Avoided / Ameliorated Fiery Crash (1338345) | |||
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Re: How Railroad Could Have Avoided / Ameliorated Fiery Crash |
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Posted by Jace on Fri Feb 6 14:45:30 2015, in response to Re: How Railroad Could Have Avoided / Ameliorated Fiery Crash, posted by SLRT on Fri Feb 6 12:38:01 2015. "Why she would get BACK into the car"It's dark, cold and icy outside. You're scared, on a crossing with the gates down and a train heading towards you. You go to what you feel is the safest place - your warm car with all kinds of air bags and other safety features. Unfortunately, the safest action is not always the most logical (re: Kaprun). And don't forget that the train was running wrong main. She may have initially thought that she was in the clear. As to the consequences, there will be many. Design is predicated to a very large extent on experience. The collision posts that kept the carshell together in this wreck are a direct result of one of the last, bad commuter rail crossing accidents when a South Shore train nailed a coil steel flatbed back in 1998. The fire retardant materials and standards used for the interior stem from the smoky BART Transbay fire in 1979. Other fire safety features are a result of the MARC/Amtrak collision and fire in 1996. But this was one of those out of the blue types of accidents: I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that have never heard of such a fiery wreck caused by a car or a wreck where live third rail may have triggered a fire inside a car. Sure there have been incidents of gas trucks getting hit with terrible resulting fires (Amtrak seemed to be good at these back in the 1970's), but not from an automobile/SUV. Thinking out loud, if the third rail didn't cause the interior fire, just the gas as the NTSB seems to have already said, then I wonder if the HVAC system helped spread the fire. In common with many cars, the M7 recirculating (interior) air intakes are below the units at the ends of the cars. The units could have quickly drawn the fire up into the ceiling ducts and spread most of the length of the car. As long as the car had power, the blowers should have stayed on. That could be why the fire was so strong so fast. Maybe, maybe not. My set of predicted changes: - The third rail configuration around crossings will be re-engineered so that the third rail fails in a safe way if there is a grade crossing collision. This could involve better securement to the track, additional gaps away from the crossing, breakaway features, etc. No matter what, you never want third rail to enter a car again. - Reinforcements on the front end of the cars to prevent punctures. - Possible changes in HVAC design if that did contribute to this disaster. - Higher priority on grade crossing elimination plans (I agree that this particular crossing will be closed within a year). - Grade crossing sensors to detect vehicles on the tracks (which of course will likely result in longer times for the gates to be down so that the train crew has sufficient time to react and distance to stop the train). Maybe the best thing to do is bring back crossing watchmen. |
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