by rangerjim94
I believe there is a dangerous flaw in the rest requirements of the hours of service laws governing railroad ooperating personnel. It seems to me that the time to commute between a conductor or engineer's home and his or her home terminal is counted as part of the 8 hour rest period, which does not seem safe, especially for those people who have a commute of 2 or more hours each way. A great way to play Russian Roulette with people's lives and I believe that the commute time should be counted separately from on duty and rest time rather than lump it in with one or the other. No wonder we have trains running stop signals right into other trains, some of them head on. Inadequate rest is what is killing engineers and conductors on the job. The time on and off duty should be determined by the actual time the engineer or conductor actually reports for their assigned trip or turn in their paper work before going home. Travel time to and from the home should NOT be counted as part of the 8 hour rest period. But in a separate category. I hope it does not take a mass casualty incident involving a train to correct this flaw as I see it.