Roger:
I visited the site on Saturday. The original media coverage was confusing,
and I couldn't get the orientation clear in my mind.
The Washington Post coverage was clearest and most to the point on this
story. Today they pointed out that indeed the trains have removable windows,
but the instructions to remove them are not practical for panicked people in a
dark, smokey train. That's one thing that must change.
This was a classic case of Murphy's law, in that everything went wrong in
the worst possible way. In most train wrecks, there aren't so many deaths.
There are all kinds of engineering fixes that can be applied to trains,
once we focus attention on the matter. For instance, I have though of the
following ideas:
1. An autonomous small vehicle that rides on the tracks ahead of every
passenger train, with a TV camera and sensors for checking the tracks and
correct switching. The vehicle would be treated as part of the train, but it
leads the locomotive by a stopping distance. This would check for bad rails,
bad switches, stuff on rails, etc. Expensive.
2. Structural design changes to all cars, so that if they collide,they will
both deflect to the right. This can provide a so-called "benign failure mode"
in which much less of the kinetic energy is expended in the head-on collision,
and the train drivers may be saved. Can be phased in as cars are replaced at
little cost.
3. Obviously lots of people will be working on improved safety features on
the inside of cars. I don't think the designers are negligent, I just think that
it takes a disaster to empower leaders that will force them to make decisions
between various engineering compromises that they otherwise would haggle about
forever.
Paul Arveson, Research Physicist
73367,1236@compuserve.com arveson@oasys.dt.navy.mil
(301) 227-3831 (W) (301) 816-9459 (H)
Code 724, NSWC, Bethesda, MD 20084