by lstone19
Tadman wrote: As to the “stop wrecking trains” position, it’s easy to say that. But now under PTC you have to worry that every engineer in the US has bad information, when prior to PTC, the worry was that a small percentage of bad apples were flaunting the rules. The probability of accidents statistically went up with PTC, because 100% of engineers now might have bad info without knowing it.Again, I agree with Tadman. That you can have bad information and not know it can lead you down the primrose path - thinking everything is fine when it's not.
I was in a similar situation once where I made a wrong decision because I had bad information with no way to know it was bad. I referee soccer. One day, with thunderstorms in the forecast, I showed up for a game to find the previous game on t-storm hold with the thunderstorm predictor at the site activated. Shortly afterwards, it gave the all clear, they resumed and finished, and I got my game started.
These predictors (Thor-Gard by trade name) sound a horn when they alarm and while alarmed, a strobe light on the device flashes every few seconds. All clear is indicated by the horn sounding again in a different pattern. The problem leading to bad information is that there is no difference in what the person looking at the external horn and light can see between its "not alarmed" state and "off" (there is a control panel but that's almost always locked in a building). And many sites turn them off (usually by timed program) at night to avoid disturbing neighbors.
So, there I was, reffing the game. Weather looked threatening but because the Thor-Gard had not alarmed, I thought I was good. Until the lightning right over the field. As it turned out, we had gone past the programmed off time for the device but there I was, thinking I had a working thunderstorm predictor to back me up. As result, what should have been an orderly stop and clear the field became a panicked get off the field and to your cars right now - RUN!
So back to Tadman's point, if you think you've got PTC backing you up (and no doubt there will be operators, particularly those with no pre-PTC experience, who will think this way), you might not operate with the care you should because you're thinking PTC will stop me from doing something really stupid (complacent as Lurker put it - just like I thought that the storm detector that turned out to be off would stop me from making a mistake).
Larry
Reno, NV (yes, I've moved)
ex-N&W Sandusky, Ohio
Reno, NV (yes, I've moved)
ex-N&W Sandusky, Ohio