Why are people driving trains?

[HardDrive]

Does it strike anyone else as strange that we have human beings driving trains in this country? If a pilot in Florida can launch a Hellfire missle from a drone in Iraq, am I to believe that our train system cannot be remotely, and in some cases automatically controlled?

I find it astounding that an accident like we have seen in California could happen. There will always be accidents because of mechanical problems, and indeed because of human error. But come on.....controlling trains? Really? This train was not overloaded, there was no failure of the track. The signal system could have failed, but THAT does not excuse the failure of having a human making that final call in the first place.

If there is a train stopped on the tracks, or headed towards you @ 60mph, STOP. How hard would it be to get this built into the locomotives programing? I'm thinking not hard if there were not the unions and the federal government involved.....

If I could sort this out as a 8 year old with an HO scale train set, I'm thinking we can get it sorted in our 'production' environment, yes?

[dentist90]

Hell, even Cadillacs have had this feature for a few years. Adaptive Cruise control, or something like that.

[Rearden]

I once read that airliners of the future will have a computer, a dog, and a man in the cockpit. The computer will fly the plane and the dog will bite the man if he attempts to touch anything.

[kstar]

I agree 100%.

These days, nothing should be running into something else; cars, planes, ships and trains included!

I guess we'll look back at these days as a "pre" technological dark age, when machines crashed into each other killing humans . . . at least until the machines decide this is what they want!

[slakjaw]

Its called RCL (remote control locomotive) before I went back to the telephone co. I was heavily involved in the RCL projects at Union Pac rail Road. As of right now its mostly only used in switching yards.

[Rick V]

I may be wrong but I am under the impression that a 757 can land itself, if that is the case I can see a train being able to be automated.

[Fritz Peyerl]

F...ing unions would not allow that type of technology. Railroad companies would have to let the locomotive engineers go or at least asigne new desk jobs.

[VaSteve]

Originally Posted by Fritz Peyerl

F...ing unions would not allow that type of technology. Railroad companies would have to let the locomotive engineers go or at least asigne new desk jobs.

Yup. Fritz beat me to it.

Union pull in the RR industry is very strong

[Seahawk]

After managing Navy UASs for four years I can categorically state that there are no technical hurdles...none.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

You're telling me you'd rather have the trains in the hands of lowest-bid computer programmers from India? Good lord, I don't know what's worse...

More automation is probably a PART of the solution (unlike most, I don't see slapping more technology on things as a solution per se), but I think the key here is better training, better screening and having the engineers/operators be there to monitor, rather than operate hands-on 100% of the time. This is the way it largely is with aircraft today - the pilots are there to monitor things and step in if there's an emergency situation. That's about it. The computers can (and do) fly the plane better, smoother and more efficiently than a human can.

That takes a lot to say coming from me - I tend to be an anti-technologist of sorts, but in this case I agree that more/better automation and technology could represent a good part of the solution. I just have a real problem with over-reliance on technological gobblygook that nobody except a handful of PhD guys in India can really understand. Especially when it comes to controlling our infrastructure. As long as there are manual failsafes/overrides, it might represent a good step forward though.

[svandamme]

human error
vs computer error

it's the same thing, cause the 'puters were programmed by humans
and they will err

so you need another human , just in case

they can make a 757 take off and land on it's own
but you feel safer knowing there's 2 pilots in the cockpit, just in case

it's no different with trains

[widgeon13]

Terrible situation and I offer my condolences to all victims and families.

I'll leave it at that!

[Noah930]

I kind of agree with Stijn. What's wrong with a real, live human being stationed in a cockpit? If all else fails, wouldn't it make you feel a little safer to know someone is actually physically around who knows how to run the thing? It's one thing to have some sort of technical error and crash an unmanned vehicle. You lose a bunch of money, essentially. It's another thing to have a cargo hold full of people that you're going to lose. Of course, when you're talking about things like trains, and stopping distances are measured in miles, you're pretty much F'ed in situations like this, regardless.

Isn't it a bit odd that the announcement has been made that the passenger train engineer (who's sadly but conveniently dead) has been leveled with complete blame? They hadn't even finished pulling dead bodies out of the wreckage and they already knew exactly where the problem lays? Doesn't that seem a bit quick to judgement?

[rattlsnak]

Passengers. Thats the difference. Yes, you see UAVs and Trains without humans inside, but never with passengers on board. Think a computer in a cockpit could safely navigate around weather, or 'know' when it is in turbulence and the list is plentiful about human interaction when something goes wrong, like your list of chioces as what to do based on the QRH, or 'diagnostic book', that a computer could not make. Even if you had someone on the ground manning each flight, why not justl have someone in the cockpit.

[84porsche]

Well not to point out the obvious but trains are on tracks and planes are not. How many people get on a roller coaster without someone up front operating the ride, sure there is someone pushing the button but it pretty much follows the tracks. Not too much to expect from a train in my opinion however in any case its nice to know that someone up front has a hand in my fate.

[kstar]

Just heard a report that the train accident in L.A. may have been due to "texting"!!!!! Sheeesh!

[HardDrive]

I cannot say I have driven a train, but it would seem that piloting an aircraft is considerably more complex task. Perhaps by an order of magnitude.

At this point, I feel that having a human on board is a nice 'feel good' feature, but really has nothing to do with the safe operation of a train.

Let me be blunt: I smell unions.

[niner11]

I don't like unions either but lets try to look at what is really happening here. As far as airplanes go computers don't deal with multiple random failures the way people can. Sometimes there isn't even a checklist written for the random things that fail on an airplane or the order that they fail in. Yes, a 757 or most any other new Boeing or Bus can land itself...with a crew controlling or monitoring the operation.....nearly all of the time. Take the crew out of the equation and the aircraft is unable to adapt to in dynamic environment

To think that a computer program can anticipate every possiblility that a person can is not realistic...at least right now. What is a much better idea is to use technology to keep the human driving the vehicle in the game or aware of what is going on.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by svandamme

human error
vs computer error

it's the same thing, cause the 'puters were programmed by humans
and they will err

so you need another human , just in case

they can make a 757 take off and land on it's own
but you feel safer knowing there's 2 pilots in the cockpit, just in case

it's no different with trains

With humans on airliners, there will never come a time when not having at least one pilot on board will be acceptable.

All that said, the pilot is the weakest link...my Global Hawks landed at the same spot in the runway every time, didn't suffer from fatigue or circadian rhythms, bad dates or being N!.

Bet me how many airline accidents were technical or pilot error...

Trains, easy day.

[mattdavis11]

I want someone piloting the ride I'm on. Watch the entire series of video and tell me how you can think differently.