OMG, engr txting

[wsuffa]

Ya know, this is quite sad, if true.

http://cbs2.com/local/Metrolink.Engineer.Robert.2.817045.html

CHATSWORTH, Calif. (CBS) ― Metrolink officials Saturday put the blame squarely on the engineer of the train for the deadly crash that has claimed at least 25 lives. They say he ran a red light.
...................
But one minute before the deadliest crash in Metrolink history, one teen -- Nick Williams -- said he received a text message on his cell phone from the engineer, whom the teens identified as Robert Sanchez.

Williams' received text was brief, "Just two lines", reported KCAL 9 and CBS 2 reporter Kristine Lazar, exclusively.

 

[jesse]

I can tell you that there are engineers out there who will text message or do worse while in motion.

A lot of them have the common sense not to though...and of course the regulations prohibit such things.

 

[mikea]

I can tell you that there are engineers out there who will text message or do worse while in motion.

A lot of them have the common sense not to though...and of course the regulations prohibit such things.

WE NEED MORE REGULATIONS, of course!

What's really weird is how Metrolink came right out a day later and said their engineer caused the disaster. I guess they can just bring the checkbook to the scene.

Around here, the driver calls the union and hides while they fight and protest any attempt to gather info.

 

[SCCutler]

...
What's really weird is how Metrolink came right out a day later and said their engineer caused the disaster. I guess they can just bring the checkbook to the scene.

...

Odds are, they have a significant degree of immunity from suit, and/or a substantial limitation on damages, under the applicable Tort Claims Act.

 

[Keith Lane]

Odds are, they have a significant degree of immunity from suit, and/or a substantial limitation on damages, under the applicable Tort Claims Act.

I wouldn't bet on that. The Tort Claims Act has never stopped the plaintiffs lawyers from the "we don't win, you don't pay" claims.
I worked on the last Metrolink disaster (Glendale 2005) where the guy parked an SUV on the tracks and set it on fire. He was just convicted of 11 counts of murder. Metrolink paid millions of dollars settling 150+ suits and it was absolutely in no way their fault. We spent weeks simulating the stopping distances.

These people and their lawyers were on the money train. I see a long dark road ahead for Metrolink. They have admitted fault right at the outset probably to try to ameliorate the mob like atmosphere that would surely have prevailed if they had not admittted it only later to have had it proved by investigators.
Lawsuit against railroads is, was and will always be a growth industry.

 

[TMetzinger]

And at least on the part of the engineer, it sounds like gross negligence to me. Is he dead?

 

[mikea]

And at least on the part of the engineer, it sounds like gross negligence to me. Is he dead?

Yep. Somehow they know the other end of the text conversation. A friend of his.

It's not Metrolink's fault. Guy was a contractor...they hired.

 

[wabower]

I worked as a Brakeman on the Santa Fe while in college, based in Amarillo, TX. The mainline east to Wellington, KS, had double tracks (two way traffic) over to the river bottom at Canadian, TX. and then up the hill and around a curve onto the Oklahoma plains before it became single-track. A trainload of produce cars from California would be down into the 25 MPH range as it climbed the hill and rounded the curve.

A favorite trick of the engine crew was to catch the head brakeman sleeping, and if another train came down the hill and around the curve at the right time they would wait until the headlight was shining directly in the front windshield of the locomotive, then start yelling "head-on, head-on" and sounding the horn. One night they didn't catch the guy in time and he bailed out and rolled down the hill for a while. They had to stop and gather him up, patch him up and continue. He was a mess, looked like a peeled orange.

I can tell you that there are engineers out there who will text message or do worse while in motion.

A lot of them have the common sense not to though...and of course the regulations prohibit such things.

 

[AdamZ]

correct me if I'm wrong here folks but the text to give an exclusive to a certain reporter and a CBS TV station sounds like this guy didn't miss the red signal but was intending on the crash.

 

[mikea]

correct me if I'm wrong here folks but the text to give an exclusive to a certain reporter and a CBS TV station sounds like this guy didn't miss the red signal but was intending on the crash.

Lemme unconfuse, because I couldn't figure out what I had missed that you were talking about.

The exclusive was the story from the CBS reporter finding and talking to the kids he was texting to.

 

[KennyFlys]

I caught a news bleep this evening where an NTSB investigator was saying even if the text messaging were true, it was certainly not the only cause. In every accident he had investigated, there were always a number of links that set up the eventual accident scenario.

Any one of us who has read an NTSB accident report will know that to be true.

 

[tdager]

I wouldn't bet on that. The Tort Claims Act has never stopped the plaintiffs lawyers from the "we don't win, you don't pay" claims.
I worked on the last Metrolink disaster (Glendale 2005) where the guy parked an SUV on the tracks and set it on fire. He was just convicted of 11 counts of murder. Metrolink paid millions of dollars settling 150+ suits and it was absolutely in no way their fault. We spent weeks simulating the stopping distances.

These people and their lawyers were on the money train. I see a long dark road ahead for Metrolink. They have admitted fault right at the outset probably to try to ameliorate the mob like atmosphere that would surely have prevailed if they had not admittted it only later to have had it proved by investigators.
Lawsuit against railroads is, was and will always be a growth industry.

Why did Metrolink pay? Seriously...there is NO WAY they could have prevented that from happening.

Arrrrgggggg....that just chaps my arse that people are so driven by greed.

 

[Keith Lane]

Why did Metrolink pay? Seriously...there is NO WAY they could have prevented that from happening.

It's because the cost of defending one's self from frivolous suits has gotten so expensive, that it is cheaper to pay a settlement than to continue the defense. Hence "we have reached a settlement without admitting guilt" statements. Also the "we cannot disclose the terms of the settlement" statements. No need to chum thew waters any more than they already are.
As an example, in the Glendale case, the plaintiffs demanded the railroad produce all the bridge maintenance records for all bridges within a few miles of the collision for the past few years. There was no bridge involved at all. The railroad had to produce all grade crossing safety materials they either had published or paid to have published for the past 5 years. This included cartoons and comic book style materials distributed among the local school systems. What does this have to do with the accident? Not a thing. But, it causes the railroad great expense to produce these for the plaintiffs, and makes them consider that a settlement is cheaper. Not right, just cheaper.
Working on these cases for ten years has really, really jaded my opinion of how the civil litigation system in this country works.
Remember how much simpler life seemed when lawyers were not permitted to advertise? Look at the back of your phone book, look at all the billboards. If you do something stupid and get hurt, sue!

I better stop now, I am not opted in for Spin Zone.

 

[TMetzinger]

And worse, civil litigation is out in the free market now... Pretty much any contract you sign with a company will bind you to settle differences through arbitration - essentially a private court, with no jury. This is a reaction to how "broken" our tort system is, in my opinion.

 

[Pi1otguy]

Well, turns out that a spokes person with the appearance of integrity was just forced out for stating the truth (as best we know).

http://www.ktla.com/pages/content_l...okeswoman-Resigns-=1&blockID=57808&feedID=171

She claims that Metrolink's Chief Executive told her she could release the basic facts of the investigation after Friday's crash, including an initial statement suggesting the Metrolink engineer may have been at fault in the deadly crash after ignoring a red warning signal.

 

[wsuffa]

A PR professional with morals. How refreshing.

"I felt the damage to my reputation is so great, I could not work for these people anymore," Tyrrell told the Los Angeles Times. "If I am not mistaken, the engineer blew through a light. The media got on top of this story apparently so unaccustomed to a public agency telling the truth they started to spin it that we were trying to throw all the blame on the engineer. Metrolink is responsible for the engineer, they are responsible for overseeing the contractor. Talking about the human error aspect of this is not a way to shift blame from Metrolink -- Metrolink is still the responsible party to oversee the contract with the engineer and the conductors."

 

[Pi1otguy]

A PR professional with morals. How refreshing.

Her days are numbered. She'll need a new profession.

But she was still doing PR damage control though. A few local talk radio shows we're floating the possibility that this maybe intentional given the verbal signal callout procedures that are SOP and 2-3 consecutive signals possible missed.

 

[Henning]

I worked as a Brakeman on the Santa Fe while in college, based in Amarillo, TX. The mainline east to Wellington, KS, had double tracks (two way traffic) over to the river bottom at Canadian, TX. and then up the hill and around a curve onto the Oklahoma plains before it became single-track. A trainload of produce cars from California would be down into the 25 MPH range as it climbed the hill and rounded the curve.

A favorite trick of the engine crew was to catch the head brakeman sleeping, and if another train came down the hill and around the curve at the right time they would wait until the headlight was shining directly in the front windshield of the locomotive, then start yelling "head-on, head-on" and sounding the horn. One night they didn't catch the guy in time and he bailed out and rolled down the hill for a while. They had to stop and gather him up, patch him up and continue. He was a mess, looked like a peeled orange.

I worked for Sperry Rail Service all through Mexico, the US & Canada (Spent most of my time on the CN in Canada, did all their track 2-3 times.) Whenever I had to transfer from car to car, most of the time I'd have to catch the next freight through. Most of the time as soon as I'd climb into the cab the engineer would go "You've got an engineers card don't you?" "Yep" (I had been sent to Gimli for training), "Good, then you drive" and would go take a freakin nap. Now across the prairies, no worries, but in the mountains and hills when you have several sections of the same train going up and down hills, the slack handling gets pretty interesting.

 

[Pi1otguy]

Yup, he was texting.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-crash2-2008oct02,0,2880289.story
In a preliminary finding, the NTSB says Robert M. Sanchez sent a message 22 seconds before his train hit a freight train in Chatsworth. Sanchez received or sent 57 messages while on duty Sept. 12.

...
Gokhan Esirgen, laboratory director for instructional physics at USC, also calculated that Sanchez would have sent the last message just after the light. He believes this timetable provided little or no time for Sanchez to react after he saw the oncoming train.

We know Sanchez didn't brake. Assuming he looked down the track after busting the switch at a combined closure speed of 83 mph is there even a point in him braking 2-4 seconds out?

 

[ScottM]

How do we know that he actually was typing 22 seconds prior to the crash?

SMS is a best effort data service. It is NOT real time. He could have typed that message, hit send minutes if not hours prior to it actually being successfully sent. There is no header on the message that would show the time between hitting the send button and the successful sending of the message to the infrastructure.

This is not a smoking gun. One technical expert could pick this apart easily in a trial and cast reasonable doubt into this being the cause.

 

[Pi1otguy]

How do we know that he actually was typing 22 seconds prior to the crash?

We don't. I reasonable assumption is that he hit send shortly before blowing the light. More importantly, it makes medical incapacitaion extremely unlikely.

This is not a smoking gun. One technical expert could pick this apart easily in a trial and cast reasonable doubt into this being the cause.

Due to ambiguity in timing of SMS its not a smoking gun. But in my experience (txting ppl in the same room), SMS is reletively fast in areas of moderate to excellent cell reception in the LA area. This atleast points to a strong possibility that he was texting within minutes of the crash. With 57 txt that day it also allows for the possibility he was composing an unsent txt as the he blew the signal. Unfortunately the latter is unprovable unless the phone is somehow recovered and somewhat operable.

 

[DeeG]

It's not Metrolink's fault. Guy was a contractor...they hired.

LOL. That's the same line that a PR weenie from FedEx told me. This was back when that Tom Hanks-FedEx crash movie came out. There was an interview with someone from FedEx talking about the movie and the FedEx rep told the interviewer that FedEx has never lost a plane. Huh???? So I searched the databases, and wrote FedEx a letter citing all the crashes I could find involving a FedEx plane. The PR weenie wrote back and told me that since those flights were contracted out, they technically weren't FedEx planes. I wrote her back and told her as far as most folks were concerned,as long as the plane was painted in FedEx livery and carrying FedEx packages, it was a FedEx plane. She never wrote me back.