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This following excerpt describes how the NTSB wanted alerters that could not be reset while asleep.  But the effort was ultimately thwarted by the preference to wait for Positive Train Separation:   The Safety Board has closely examined the role of alerters. In the collision of two Norfolk Southern Railway freight trains at Sugar Valley, Georgia, on August 9, 1990, the crew of one of the trains failed to stop at a signal. The Board concluded that the engineer of that train was probably experiencing a micro-sleep or was distracted. Based on testing, it was determined that as the train approached the stop signal, the alerter would have begun an alarm cycle. The Board concluded that the engineer “could have cancelled the alerter system while he was asleep by a simple reflex action that he performed without conscious thought.” As a result of the investigation, the Board made the following recommendation to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA): R-91-26 In conjunction with the study of fatigue of train crewmembers, explore the parameters of an optimum alerter system for locomotives.   The FRA responded to this recommendation on June 28, 1993, advising that it had “awarded two contracts to develop proposals to modify the existing alerter systems so that they cannot be reset by reflex action.” In a followup letter dated August 12, 1997, the FRA told the Safety Board that while a proposal for a prototype had been developed, the contractor had advised the FRA that “they could not see a market for the device large enough to justify its further development.” The FRA advised the Safety Board that it believed that the lack of a market was due to the FRA’s own “announced determination” to support positive train separation technology. As a result, the Safety Board classified Safety Recommendation R-91-26 “Closed—Unacceptable Action” on November 4, 1997.   The above quoted from this link: <a href="http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/recletters/2007/R07_8.pdf">http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/recletters/2007/R07_8.pdf</a>
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