Barry Ritholz on the Amtrak derailment from last month, titled More Proof Of America’s Inadequate Infrastructure:
The details are still being sorted out on the deadly Amtrak crash that killed at least six people earlier this week and injured 100s more. But what we do know is that the stretch of track where the train derailed did not have the latest automated speed control system.
Oh, sure. It didn’t have the latest Bluetooth hands-free throttle or some crazy space age nonsense. Nobody is going to pay $900 a ticket for a deflector dish and inverse tachyon beam trains or whatever.
The NTSB has been pushing for this safety system to be put in place since 1970. That is not a typo, the need for this system has been known for literally 45 years. Following a commuter train(s) head-on collision near Darien, Connecticut, the NTSB began urging the development and implementation of positive train control systems.
<Spit take noise goes here> 1970?!
The bad news is that the train industry, through the Association of American Railroads, has been lobbying against this. The Unions are no better, fighting implementation for fear it will cost jobs.
My favorite kind of sci-fi dystopia might be the one where the machines are trying to kill us. Someone invents a robot that ends up flipping out and tries to kill all the humans. Then people of all races, colors, and creeds unite against our common metal foe. We triumph.
In this case, we invented a machine to save lives 45 years ago, and both labor and capital have united in a horrifying attempt to keep those machines from saving us from the machines that humans use to accidentally kill hundreds of people.
Congress, that bastion of partisan gridlock, got together in 2008 to say that by December 2015, almost all passenger rail tracks will have these safeguards in place. As a country, we’re almost at a place where easily-preventable accidents will be… well, prevented.
It is unlikely that the industry will meet the deadline set 7 years ago.
Oh, come on.