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[quote user="BroadwayLion"][quote user="Bucyrus"]Therefore, if the engineer of the striking train collided with the train ahead because he was asleep, he had 1 minute 11 seconds to fall asleep. [/quote] This is not so. He could have been asleep for a half an hour or more. It is not problem at all to operate a locomotive in your sleep. Now think about your train. How hard is it to touch the alerter with your eyes closed. How hard is it to make minor throttle adjustments with your eyes closed. The sad truth is you CAN operate a train in your sleep, and if you *can* do it then it *does* happen. [/quote] I believe it is accurate to say that he had 1 minute 11 seconds to fall asleep. I understand your point that he did have more time if he was able to reset the alerter while asleep. And I understand your point that it is possible to reset the alerter while nearly asleep. But I associate sleep with a complete suspension of cognitive or conscious action, so I don't know if it is technically possible to reset the alerter while fully asleep. After all, the alerter does alert. So when a person resets it, it is because the alerter alerted them to the need for reset. So it seems to me that there has to be some conscious action in the reset response.  The main characteristic that I associate with the action known as “sleeping on the alterter” is that a person is able to reset it and immediately fall back into total sleep.   In the case of this collision, the engineer had 1 minute 11 seconds between the last throttle adjustment and the impact.  Now we don’t know if something else might have occurred capable of waking him up during that span.  If he happened to get stung by a wasp 41 seconds after resetting the throttle, then he had on 30 seconds to fall asleep before impact. But, in any case, assuming no disturbance after the last throttle adjustment, the engineer did in fact have 1 minute 11 seconds to fall asleep.  He may have had more, so maybe I should stipulate that he had 1 minute 11 seconds minimum.
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