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New story on the Northridge Metrolink crash.

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I am not in any way defending the engineer against blame for this wreck.  I understand that there was more than one signal involved, and that their aspects consisted of position as well as color.  However, I do find it interesting that the article linked to the first post seems to be exploring the idea of excusing the engineer for looking at a red light and seeing it as a green light.  This could happen with color blindness, but I assume Sanchez was known to not be color blind according to a prior test.  So seeing a color wrong, while not being color blind, would have to occur at a purely mental level of the recognition process.  This is the area that, it seems to me, the article is exploring.  I am only listing the breakdown steps of signal compliance in order to position the theory being offered by the article.    <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> But aside from that theory of the engineer seeing the signal aspect, but failing to recognize it, there is a second, parallel theory that the signal was displaying a false clear.  Witnesses at the station say the signal was green, and now the conductor is saying it was green.  What is interesting is that this theory of a signal malfunction and the above theory of a signal misinterpretation are mutually exclusive.  It is impossible for both theories to be correct.  Therefore each of these two competing theories tends to discredit the other.  In other words, because there are two competing theories, each theory is weaker than it would have been had not the other theory existed.   I believe that the pop culture news media these days places a perpetrator against a template of expectations based on how the media’s worldview ideology applies to the perpetrator.  And if the perpetrator does not fit that template, they want to place the blame elsewhere and make the perpetrator into a victim.  In my opinion, this dynamic is playing a strong role in this crash, and yet, in their zeal to defend the engineer, the newspaper has actually weakened his defense by offering the competing theory of what caused the crash.  That’s what I am getting at—not defending the engineer.
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