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| Re: How Railroad Could Have Avoided / Ameliorated Fiery Crash (1338444) | |||
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Re: How Railroad Could Have Avoided / Ameliorated Fiery Crash |
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Posted by Jace on Fri Feb 6 23:26:18 2015, in response to Re: How Railroad Could Have Avoided / Ameliorated Fiery Crash, posted by Bill West on Fri Feb 6 17:33:19 2015. "The third rail puncture and fire consequence was a once in a century fluke, I've never heard of such an extreme case before. It is just unfortunate and not anything that has high enough probability to warrant trying to change the long shot future odds of a repeat."I think you already know that there is no such thing as a fluke when passengers/innocent bystanders are killed. This is especially the case when the accident is such that one can easily visualize the horror of being there when it happened; you feel the same vulnerabilities that those on board surely felt. That's why a coil rolling down the aisle of a NICTD car led to lots of structural revisions, hell, that's why 9/11 led to all kinds of changes...This accident exposed clear but unforeseen vulnerabilities. There will be changes; third rail can never be allowed inside a car again. The thought of this is too scary to chance a repeat. Lots can be done, but no matter what is implemented, there is only one measure of success: no such accident ever occurs again. If the odds of repeating the accident sequence are already low then pretty much anything you do will be a success. That's great news for the governor or who ever is spending the money. Think of Sandy in this context. As for some of the ideas, if third rail can't be tied down better then maybe break it into short segments with gaps between right after crossings. That way you won't have a car or two lanced by a rail. On the car side, look for ways to improve the emergency braking rate much less survivability in a fire. And car end reinforcing of some sort will happen, no doubt. |
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