

Why are railroads waiting to install safety technology? - anigbrowl
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-positive-train-control-05150514-story.html

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kbart
Related: [http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/14/amtrak-
promis...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/14/amtrak-promises-
automatic-braking-crash)

Automatic breaking system are used in other countries for decades now, so the
problem is political, not technical.

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kwhitefoot
Not merely decades, the GWR had automatic stop from 1906.

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kwhitefoot
One of my uncles was an engine driver in the UK, he told me that on the Great
Western Railway and its successor British Rail (at least on the GWR lines and
locos) that even on steam trains it was not possible to drive through a stop
signal without holding on to a lever to defeat the trip that was connected to
the signal. It worked using a lever that poked up in the middle of the track
to engage a lever on the locomotive that would disconnect the vacuum line on
the brakes thus stopping the train. On diesels it would literally blow fuses
that stopped the motor and engage the fail safe brakes. See Wikipedia:

An "automatic train control" system was introduced from 1906 which was a
safety system that applied a train's brakes if it passed a danger signal.[89]

That was over a hundred years ago, yet a few years ago in the newly re-
privatised UK railway system we had a serious collision where one train ran a
stop signal because there was no such system in place.

~~~
KJKingJ
ATP
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_protection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_protection))
is present on some Great Western trains, and TWPS
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Protection_%26_Warning_Sy...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Protection_%26_Warning_System))
is present on some others. There is also AWS
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_warning_system_(railw...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_warning_system_\(railways\))).
Looking through the list of rail accidents in the UK
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_in_the_U...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_in_the_United_Kingdom)),
the last one caused by a signal passed at danger was the Ladbroke Grove
accident in 1999
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash)).

There are still regular incidents though, such as the one at Wootton Bassett
recently
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Wootton_Bassett_SPAD_incid...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Wootton_Bassett_SPAD_incident)).

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FredDollen
Seems like a tablet with GPS and railroad maps, attached to a loud buzzer
would be a far easier/cheaper solution to this problem.

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rdsnsca
The answer is simple : it cost money.

~~~
upofadown
Well in particular it cost money due to false positives.

