Air Bag System to Reduce Railway Pedestrian Fatalities

[Steve Raney]

In the US in 2006, there were 500 fatal collisions between trains and pedestrians. Of these 500, about 360 were suicides. Psychologically speaking, these are “dramatic” suicides where less-dramatic suicide methods would not be substituted. These fatalities are devastating to families and to rail transit personnel. Rail transit systems experiencing frequent fatalities include: Caltrain, Amtrak Capitol Corridor, Washington DC Metrorail, and others. Rail pedestrian fatalities are also an international problem. The UK Rail Safety and Standards Board estimates the total cost of suicides (trackside and at stations) to the UK rail industry in 2003 was more than 11M GBP at 61,000 GBP cost per suicide. This cost includes delay to trains and lost working time as a result of trauma suffered by staff . Each year the UK experiences about 200 rail suicides. In 2008, there were 2,000 rail suicides in Japan. Germany experiences roughly 936 railway suicides per year. Australia has called for improved crashworthiness of trains.

A front-of-train air bag system shows promise in increasing rail safety. When inflated, the air bag system might be 15 feet long and 7 feet high. The system will be able to safely handle a collision between a pedestrian and a 60 mph locomotive, grabbing and holding the pedestrian until the locomotive comes to a stop. Collision physics calculations have been validated for a constant 20g deceleration. Such an air bag system will necessarily have a more complicated design than current in-vehicle automotive air bags. States a Principal Engineer at TRW Automotive: "I believe that this concept is possible. I believe that it would take quite a bit of development due to the volume of the 'bag' and the volatility of the propellants commonly used in air bag systems. We would need to perform a lot of experimentation but I overall I think it can be developed." In early 2010, the Federal Railroad Administration undertook a small study with somewhat promising results. A crash test dummy was collided with a steel plate with three automotive airbags reducing the damage.

Details:

1. Draft US federal transit research statement: (will be submitted in June, 2010) http://www.cities21.org/cms/tcrp_rail_airbag.pdf http://www.cities21.org/cms/tcrp_rail_airbag.doc

2. web site with related airbag safety patents, etc: http://www.cities21.org/cow_catcher.htm

3. See the December post: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/165446/1821181.aspx

Note that FRA suggests that $10,000 cost per airbag system per locomotive might be economically feasible.

[Mookie]

Sounds like a thrilling ride to me! 

What ever happened to personal responsibility?  Now people will not only sue because they "should be prevented from walking in front of a train" but will sue for injuries from the air bag.

I am skeptical....

[zugmann]

Mookie

I am skeptical....

 

You aren't the only one.  Sure, let's force companies to spend millions of dollars (and taxpayer money, mind you) because some morons are drunk, high, suicidal, or plain morons and walking where they shouldn't be.  

A lot cheaper to just hose off the front of the train when needed....

If someone wants to kill themselves enough that they step onto the tracks, then they WILL find a way to kill themselves.  And in the case of subways (Washington Metro, for example) they can just grab the third rail. 

[Steve Raney]

1. Note that with the 61,000 GBP cost per suicide, there may just be a economically sound case to spend $10,000 per locomotive on such protection. If the annual US cost is 500 fatalities * 61,000 GBP, that's approximately $47M per year in taxpayer subsidy for rail / pedestrian fatalities.

2. Note also that the safety standard for new technologies is zero fatalities. IE if trains had been recently invented, they would have to be far safer. Likewise, if "cars on roads" had been recently invented, they would have to far safer.

3. If someone gets depressed and wants to have a "dramatic" suicide, then they will not substitute other, undramatic suicide methods. There's a complicated suicide psychology involved. These are preventable suicides where folks would NOT just pop pills as a substitute.

One conclusion from a study of folks who survived Golden Gate Bridge jumps. On the way down, they all concluded that they wanted to live.

[BaltACD]

Mookie

Sounds like a thrilling ride to me! 

What ever happened to personal responsibility?  Now people will not only sue because they "should be prevented from walking in front of a train" but will sue for injuries from the air bag.

I am skeptical....

Don't forget all the suits from those who sustain catastrophic type injuries the leave them as para or quadriplegics....You must pay for my continuing medical care...I should be dead....

[Phoebe Vet]

They could save a lot of lives and serious injuries every year if they took the airbags OUT of cars.  I can't imagine why they would want to put them on the front of a train.

Since airbags are very expensive, single use, and they will fire every time a train hits anything: a car, a branch that has drooped into the right of way, a cow, a deer in the middle of nowhere...

[BigJim]

What about the employees that get injured when one of these air bags accidentally deploy when adjusting a drawhead or such.

What is one to do? Run with this thing already deployed? 'Cause if it waits until impact to deploy, it's too late.

Think about it. This is just another really bad idea that we don't need.

[samfp1943]

BaltACD

Mookie

Sounds like a thrilling ride to me! 

What ever happened to personal responsibility?  Now people will not only sue because they "should be prevented from walking in front of a train" but will sue for injuries from the air bag.

I am skeptical....

Don't forget all the suits from those who sustain catastrophic type injuries the leave them as para or quadriplegics....You must pay for my continuing medical care...I should be dead....

    Not sure about the national implications, but around here in 'fly-over'country; when a air bag is deployed you get a full emergency response.   Ambulance, cops and in a lot of cases, the fire dept as well.

 Pertinent link: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2008-17.html

  FTL: "...The safety bars came down, leaving the Porsche trapped on the rails. According to witnesses, it took the driver awhile to realize he was stuck. Finally he jumped from the car and started to run--straight toward the oncoming train, waving his arms in an attempt to save his expensive SUV!

The attempt was partly successful. The car received less damage than its owner, who landed 30 meters away. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.

The moral of the story? Momentum always wins...."

 

[BigJim]

Phoebe Vet

They could save a lot of lives and serious injuries every year if they took the airbags OUT of cars. 

Phoebe,
Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to make such statements.
I personally was sitting still at a road crossing, in double track territory, when a man in a new BMW decided to come around the crossing gates. He was promptly hit full broadside by an opposing train running about 30-35mph that he didn't take the time to look for! The only thing that saved this guy was the fact that the BMW had side impact air bags!

Those side impact bags quickly made a believer out of me!

I hope that man personally contacted BMW and thanked them for saving him from his own stupidity!

[Phoebe Vet]

I have been involved in the investigation of three one car fatal accidents that were caused by an air bag firing for no reason that we could determine.  One of them, witnessed by the driver of the car behind them, who heard and saw the air bag deploy.  The car turned right, ran off the highway and into a stand of trees, killing all four people in the car.

If I have been to three, how many do you suppose there have been?

You might be surprised how badly you can mangle a car and not be killed.

I cannot imagine an giant airbag on the front of a train being all that effective.

[TomDiehl]

OK, somebody was watching Smash Lab on the Discovery Channel. However, their airbag was to push errant cars out of the way (unsuccessfully of course) of an oncoming train. Aired January 30, 2008, episode 4.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Smash_Lab_episodes

 

[GP40-2]

Mookie

Sounds like a thrilling ride to me! 

What ever happened to personal responsibility?  Now people will not only sue because they "should be prevented from walking in front of a train" but will sue for injuries from the air bag.

I am skeptical....

Oh, pleeaase...Get with the times Mookie. Why take personal responsibility when you can simply blame it on somebody else. Especially when that "somebody else" happens to have a lot of money. You are such a social dinosaur...LOL

[ValleyX]

Sounds like a cockamanie scheme to me, I'm sorry but exactly when and how would this deploy? Would it be the personal responsibility of the engineer to deploy this airbag if he sees trouble ahead? And, if the person gets up and walks away, you've got another problem, putting it all back together. And, as someone mentioned, what about wildlife? There's all sorts of wildlife out there, deer would surely make this deploy As bad as a segment of society seems to want to try anymore, you just can't save everyone from everything.

[Murphy Siding]

Steve Raney

1. Note that with the 61,000 GBP cost per suicide, there may just be a economically sound case to spend $10,000 per locomotive on such protection. If the annual US cost is 500 fatalities * 61,000 GBP, that's approximately $47M per year in taxpayer subsidy for rail / pedestrian fatalities.

  Taxpayer subsidy? Huh? 

      Once the word gets around that you can't kill yourself dramatically by jumping in front of a train,  the potential suicides will have to settle for jumping in front of a semi truck.  How many gazillions of dollars will it take to equip every semi truck with a set of rubber buggy baby bumpers?

     And, if this is such a burning issue,  why don't we have safety nets under the Golden Gate Bridge?

[blownout cylinder]

Phoebe Vet

I cannot imagine an giant airbag on the front of a train being all that effective.

I can, however, see it being effective as a human cannonball mover----sort of a giant cue stick----

[Semper Vaporo]

If a locomotive hitting a pedestrian can propel them 60-ft., I really wonder how far an airbag going poof on the front of a locomotive in addition to the speed of the locomotive might propel them?  They might survive the impact with the locomotive-airbag, but will they survive being tossed even farther?  Can we say, "Alley-Ooop!"

[Modelcar]

Phoebe Vet

They could save a lot of lives and serious injuries every year if they took the airbags OUT of cars

 

Don't doubt what you have seen in accidents, but I'd say the total facts and figures are on the other side of the debate.

And air bags on locomotives.....!!  Way over the top...Absolutely something not to do.....

[tomikawaTT]

Just another REALLY DUMB idea.

As for Zero Fatalities in new design, that is an invention of the legal, media, political and insurance professions, people who have no more concept of technological reality than I have of Urdu.  As any engineer or wrench-bender will tell you, it does not and never will exist in the real world.  (I spent a lot of years as a flight line mechanic - and NEVER saw a single aircraft that didn't have some items of deferred maintenance logged on the forms.  If we had demanded perfection, the only things in the sky would have been birds.)

So a few hundred people do some really stupid things and get hit by trains, every year.  (I discounted the suicides, who will kill themselves regardless of counter-technology.)  If it wasn't for government-mandated paperwork, drug testing and fol-de-rol, the cost per squashed pedestrian would be a lot lower.  How much will it cost to do the same things if the air bag actually does save one of these Darwin Award candidates from his own folly?  At least as much, plus the cost of repacking the air bag.  Also, I rather doubt that an air bag smaller than a detached garage would help (if that's the appropriate term) one of these fools to survive to breed more fools.

Smash Lab already proved that a locomotive air bag won't save a vehicle from being totaled.  How much time, effort and money are we going to waste convincing ourselves that a 'people-size' locomotive air bag won't be any more effective?

Chuck

[Steve Raney]

Hopefully the Principal Engineer at TRW Automotive is even more skilled with airbag design than the Smash Lab TV show folks. I don't understand how Smash Lab is the final word. I believe that TRW was envisioning something with a more advanced design:

Collision physics calculations have been validated for a constant 20g deceleration. Such an air bag system will necessarily have a more complicated design than current in-vehicle automotive air bags. States a Principal Engineer at TRW Automotive: "I believe that this concept is possible. I believe that it would take quite a bit of development due to the volume of the 'bag' and the volatility of the propellants commonly used in air bag systems. We would need to perform a lot of experimentation but I overall I think it can be developed." In early 2010, the Federal Railroad Administration undertook a small study with somewhat promising results.

[zugmann]

 Wouldn't it be easier to stop running trains? 

 

I mean, if we are going to bow down to a few suicidal nuts, then let's bow down the whole way. 

[RRKen]

Note that FRA suggests that $10,000 cost per airbag system per locomotive might be economically feasible.

 Not in this world is that going to happen.  I got a cheaper idea, stay he heck off the railroad.

[Phoebe Vet]

Air bags are a stupid idea that was forced on the automotive industry by the government.

They are not used in race cars, they are not used in airplanes, and they should not be used in or on trains.

When it became obvious to the government that air bags were killing people in the front seat, their bureaucratic solution was to tell people to put their children and other short people in the back seat away from the airbags.  If that is not possible, you can now apply for government permission to turn off the air bags.

Statistics claiming thousands of "saves" are meaningless.  Every time a car is substantially damaged and nobody dies some well meaning person claims that the airbag saved them.  It is usually not the case.

If airbags were saving thousands of lives a year as claimed, then the traffic fatality statistics would be continually dropping since airbags were mandated.  They are not.

I investigated this accident.  No one died and no one had any permanent injuries.  I guarantee that if the car had been equipped with airbags, people would be claiming that the air bag had saved him.

Let's put the expense and lunacy where it belongs and mandate that people who walk on the tracks must wear a full coverage air bag suit.  After all, a big inflated suit would be much more effective as you go bouncing down the tracks than trying to put a big explosive pillow on the front of the train.  Why should the railroad bear the expense instead of the track trespasser?

[CShaveRR]

Let's assume that a deployed bag (once we clear the issue of how, or by whom, it is deployed) will hold the non-victim-to-be securely. Has it also got a way of lifting the person away from the track structure? It wouldn't be good to hold him with his legs dragging along the ties!

I keep thinking about the video I saw of the lady in Downers Grove (Fairview Avenue) getting smacked by the BN E unit. Everybody was crossing the track in front of that train, and she was the unfortunate one who got clipped. Just a glancing blow (another inch or three and she would have been clear) that literally exploded her in her dress and threw her off to the side toward the cameraman (now a reformed foamer). Would somebody have had time to deploy an airbag for a scenario like that? An airbag that would grab the victim of such a glancing blow would, if deployed, have hit, if not grabbed, a lot of non-victims as well.

If the deployment is automatic, triggered by an impact, the impact itself (as Pat points out) already would have killed the victim, before the bag had a chance to fully deploy.

Positive Train Control will, theoretically, have the capability of taking care of vehicles on the tracks at crossings, stopping the trains short. I think money (in the form of fines) and law enforcement is probably a better way to spend the money.

An airbag system would have to be installed on the front of every locomotive, or on both ends of locomotives that are likely to be used singly, in order for the system to be effective. It would have to be based somewhere in the same area as the couplers and m.u. hoses (anywhere else would be a safety hazard for crews as well). What would keep the bag on the rear unit from deploying as soon as the unit made contact with the cars of its train? If it came out at all beyond the clearance diagram of the engine, it would be a great risk to the employee making the joint. And said employee would have to clear away (repack?) the bag before he could do anything practical, such as making the hoses or even checking to see if the coupling had made!

Please, for the sake of all railroaders and prospective rail passengers, forget about this idea!

[Norm48327]

 I've heard a lot of dumb ideas in my time, but this one is WAY over the top.

[ButchKnouse]

You can't idiot proof the world.

[ValleyX]

I had to go and check my calendar because I was certain April Fool's Day had already passed.

[Modelcar]

Phoebe Vet

Air bags are a stupid idea that was forced on the automotive industry by the government.

They are not used in race cars,

Again....No problem with what you are saying about {some}, accidents.  But you certainly must be in the minority of opinions and those with the facts that know.....the bags do save lives.  I'm sure both you and I...know nothing is perfect.

Race Cars without air bags.....Ok, if all the cars had a roll cage structure....super belt structures....driver helmets.....protective seats costing thousands of dollars....Fire supressing equipment.....Thick styrofoam panels in side "door" panels.....Window net on side window.....and some other various items, for the driver's safety, maybe...we could get away without safety air bags as we know them now in our above equipped passenger cars.

[Phoebe Vet]

If we continue this conversation the connection to trains will be lost.

We will obviously never agree.

[GP40-2]

RRKen

... I got a cheaper idea, stay he heck off the railroad.

That won't work since it only requires common sense. No way for a company like TRW to make a profit off of people's common sense. Besides, I'm sure TRW is trying to line up federal funds to "study" this "problem" as we speak. Of course, all at the taxpayers expense.

[Anonymous]

.