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Scott: I think I am correct in not inferring that you said I said DTC was foolproof. I only said that it's perceived to have certain safety advantages over TWC. "After arrival of" provisions have been stripped out of TWC on some railroads as well. I can think of at least 10 recent collisions, some fatal, mostly between trains and maintenance-of-way equipment, due to failure to wait for the train specified in the "After arrival of" line. There's nothing inherently unsafe with that aspect of the rules so long as people obey the rules. If they don't ... God help them. OK, so people seem to get the After arrival of feature wrong. But stripping it out isn't a perfect solution, either. Without that line, you force two authorities instead of one onto the dispatcher and train crew: one to get the train to a meeting point, and a second at some later time to get the train out of the meeting point. That slows everything down, and doubles the opportunity for a missed repeat. I am baffled how "dispatcher error" could have any inclusion in the cause of the accident you discuss, based on the information you provide. I read the NTSB report you linked (which is only a summary, unfortunately). All dispatcher transmissions are taped. He or she either issued a valid DTC authority, or they issued an invalid DTC authority. The crew said one thing, or they said another thing. Period. There's no room for argument here in the example you cite. DTC authorities are created on a computer, which has built in logic-checks that prevent lapping authorities. You cannot override the machine and create a lap. However, you CAN read one thing on the screen, and tell the crew another thing -- and I know of instances of it, both accidental and believe it or not, intentional. But that would show up on the tapes, because the DTC computer records every key stroke and display. If it showed one thing, and you said another thing, you are pulled from service on the spot, and in this case, probably fired. After an accident, the tapes are impounded. The rules men show up, get the tapes, go to an empty console, and replay the display and the radio and telephone conversations in real time. In about one minute, they will know who made the error. The NTSB investigators listen to the tapes, too. I suppose it's possible that conspiracies to cover things up occur, but since there's no percentage in a cover-up for the rules men, the railroad, or the NTSB, one might as well also think it's possible for the sun to come up in the west tomorrow morning. I went through one investigation during my time as a dispatcher. It started like this: about three hours after my turnover, the Chief called me at home and woke me up. "Markie," he asked, "Do you recall telling the crew on train such-and-such to do such-and-such at about 1 a.m.? "Sure do," I replied, "and if you go listen to the tapes, you'll know it for yourself." "Oh, you know we'll be doing that," he said. "Now get some sleep and we'll see you tonight." What the Chief was doing was offering me a "Come to Jesus" in case I really had screwed up. In fact, he'd already listened to the tapes, and was only checking to see if I knew something that wasn't there. If you lie, and they catch you, you will be SO fired. If you confess, you might only be fired for a few days or a few months, depending on your record and the egregiousness of the rules violation in question. There is no substitute for vigilance and adherence to the rules.
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