by ThirdRail7
JimBoylan wrote:The NTSB doesn't hold investigations for individual employees. They hold investigations against instances. To my knowledge, the NTSB can not hold someone out of service, nor can they fire someone. As previously indicated, the trains have cameras, witronix, gps and the signals are recorded. It didn't take time to see the preliminary cause which is why I made the cryptic response in the early stages of the thread. The "he said-she said" game is almost a thing of the past. There is too much information out there. It is just a matter of processing it and that doesn't take a great deal of time.ThirdRail7 wrote:The investigation after the accident would show that the signal was working properly and could NOT display Clear while the switch was lined for the siding. The jumper wires had been removed by that time. The only proof the engineer had to show that he was operating on a Clear signal against a diverging switch was the recording in Amtrak's camera. If the NTSB hadn't got possession of it, would the engineer have been allowed to use that evidence to show the impossible, an apparent false Clear signal, which happened because a Supervisor had tampered with some wires? Ordinarily, when a railroad has a choice between a Supervisor and an engineer, who gets fired?JimBoylan wrote:Other posts on the Group have claimed that many railroads (Union Pacific, for example) always fire the employees that were involved in an accident. Then, their union representative may demand a hearing to try to get their jobs back. The railroad may only allow evidence from locomotive cameras at the hearing if it shows the employee to be at fault. But, in this case, the National Transportation Safety Board got the pictures away from Amtrak.There was no hearing. Typically, crews are removed from service after accidents and are medically disqualified until the results of post accident D&A tests are available. In a situation like this, the investigation would show there was no crew culpability (unless they messed up on something else earlier in the trip) and they would be put back into service.
At Chatsworth, Calif., the Conductor testified that the Engineer had a green signal, but investigation afterwards showed that should not have happened, and the dead Engineer on the cell phone was blamed for the accident.
The only thing the train crew would have need to worry about is if they did something wrong prior to the incident that showed up in the investigation. The incident itself was cut and dry: The train had the signal and the crew responded appropriately. The investigation centered around "why" they had the signal.
I want my road foreman!