Why Remote Controlled Locomotives Should be Banned

[Anonymous]

With the rash of accidents involving remotely controlled locomotves, it seems to me that the railroads are making a big mistake in using this technology as a means of job reductions, and the increased productivity the remote diesels would bring. The UTU and BLE have been sold a bill of goods that borders on a dangerous game of Russian Roulette being played with people's lives. It seems to me that the real reason behind ramming this technology down worker's throats is corporate greed, pure and simple. Executive Management seems to believe that the average train crew workers are expendable, when they are not. I know a few locomotive engineers and from what they tell me, the remote control operation is not as safe as its promoters claim it is. Look at all the accidents involving remote controlled locomotives on CSX , Union Pacific, and o ther railroads using them. I think it is time to raise a red flag and get rid of the remote controlled locos. The sooner the better.

[ironhorseman]

Where's your proof? Cite your sources. Show me the raw data.

[Anonymous]

Iron, the file is to big to post here. If you are willing to give me a way to send it to you I will. The source is the BNSF. It is a compiled file of the RCO incidents from March 2002 to June 16, 2003.

[michaelstevens]

Didn't an UP Engineer run herself over (fatally) just this week ?

[wabash1]

There is no increase in productivity only loss. when a 3 man crew gets a hold of 50-100 cars and starts switching them out they are done in no time the remotes operators ( on this road i work for) are only allowed to handle 10 cars at a time. the loss of time going back and forth for more cars is loss enough. the derailments and side swipes are common. Now someone wants prof on paper sorry it cant be done. every time some one derails them or side swipes them nothing happens it is burried the carrier wants to keep these things so they dont report them. Now death on the other hand is something they cant hide and must be reported. and with this i wait like you. to read documented proof that it happened.

[Anonymous]

Well, also..

Let's just say they do get these remote locomotives up and running, how the hell would the locomotive know if it ran someone over if they were being an idiot and walking on the tracks?

It could be jsut me not knowing what a remote control locomotive is all about.. I kind of get a vision with a guy with a remote, kind of like those TYCO RC cars..

How would the locomotive itself know when it runs someone over?

What happens if the remote fails, breaks, dies.. Does that mean runnaway loco?
Or does the locomotive stop moving when it stops recieveing commands.. And just lies dead where it was.. that could jam crossings for hours.

[wabash1]

Kev

the remote will stop in its tracks when it loses signal with its operator. if the engine dies it sets its brakes also. but as you stated it dont know when it has run through a switch or hit someone. and yes it will block crossings for hours.

Also the remotes are regular engines with the remote device on it. It can be set up in seconds to be run like a regular engine with a lic engineer.

[K. P. Harrier]

QUOTE: Originally posted by pfrench68

Iron, the file is to big to post here. If you are willing to give me a way to send it to you I will. The source is the BNSF. It is a compiled file of the RCO incidents from March 2002 to June 16, 2003.

Hey, pfrench68:

I am curious how many incidents were listed between the dates you mentioned. What was the typical happening? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

This is the header of the 30 page compilation of RCO incidents. The incidents range from cornering equipment, run through switches (power and Hand), rough joints causing a derailment, shoves hitting occupied power or cars, running signals, kicking cars into other jobs, breaking knuckles. You name it it has been done.

The number of RCO the BNSF jobs was running is important to understand. The RCOs were started at the very end on February 2002. by June 10, 2002 there were 27 jobs. By the end of 2002 128 jobs. They haven't updated the number of RCO jobs in 2003. If they continued to put them on at the same rate as they were in the last six months of 2002 there would have been about 228 jobs by the middle of June 2003. That would put the average number of jobs for the whole period covered in this report somewhere between 75 and 114 per day.

The full 30 page report gives details of some of the accidents.

BNSF INCIDENTS INVOLVING
REMOTE CONTROL LOCOMOTIVES
Updated- June 16, 2003
Summary of Cause Factors
Incidents- 181
Human Factor- 117- 64%
Miscellaneous - 28- 16%
Track- 23- 13%
Equipment- 7- 4%
Signal- 6- 3%

[Anonymous]

How many of the incident were from operator error?
Up here in Canada we have carman using remotes to switch B/O'S from
the shop over to a yard track for the last 15 years and we have not had one
operator error.I have operated one for many year and I feel very safe with it.
You know your the one in control.

[wabash1]

I can tell you this when you tallk to a conductor most will tell you that they would rather have a exsperanced engineer at the controls while holding onto and switching out 3-4k tons when you say stop the engineer stops on a remote it will be many cars later it will stop. as ed if he is switching and has 75 cars does he want air on them cars and switch back and forth or a engineer who can kick them and stop on a dime.

[starwardude]

pfrench68, you gave me enough proof, but bigedd has a point. RC locos aren't suited for mainline action, but are a better option for places like steel mills,or small industries,where there could be harm done to people

[Anonymous]

I read about a nice accident in Canada. It happened in a hump yard. The RCO shoving the hill derailed some cars. He kept trying to get them restarted and succeeded in piling them on the track that went back to the second hump-lead. Along comes the other RCL hump job and runs into the pile of cars laying on their side in front of it. Guess who the ones in control were?

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

To be totally fair, we should also gather statistics concerning the number of accidents involved when a licensed engineer is in the cab.

[Anonymous]

To be fair we should count all of the RCO accidents that were covered up. I know what the BNSF procedure is after an accident. I know a 20 car pileup happened in the yard that fouled the main and was estimated by the company to cost about $300,000. That was a low figure because instead of the two cars that were estimated to be scrapped, all of the cars involved were scrapped. The RCO crew was sent home at the end of the shift without being interviewed about the accident and without taking a post-accident drug test, this is not normal BNSF post accident procedure..

Even with the uncounted accidents, the yard accidents as a percentage of all railroad accidents has been on the increase since 2001.

In 2001 there were no RCOs on the class one railroads. Starting in 2002 RCOs were phased over the course of the year to have 128 RCO jobs on the BNSF by the end of December 2002. The RCO jobs has continued to increase through 2003. I would have to believe that this would be representative of the other class one railroads.

This is a letter to Mr. Rutter of the FRA from RRESQ. The statistics quoted from the letter are from the FRA web site and derived from the accident reports the carriers DO send to the FRA.


Dear Mr. Rutter:

The arrogance of both the FRA and the Union Pacific Railroad to ignore the public outcry for stiffer regulation on remote controlled locomotives and the death of a young man on December 12 who was forced to work an RCO job exhausted and alone...will not go unchecked. Both UP and the FRA continue to spout statistics about a 40% reduction in Yard accidents with the implementation of Remote Controlled Locomotives. However the FRA website seems to contradict those statements and reports a different set of statistics.

2001 - Number of Yard Accidents: 501 - 55.92% of all train accidents.
2002 - Number of Yard Accidents: 468 - 56.80% of all train accidents
2003 (available only through September) Number of Yard Accidents: 349 - 58.36% of all train accidents

UP is "right on track" statistically to incur another 116-120 yard incidents by the end of 2003. That would meet or exceed the statistics for 2002 and 2001. And as we all know...these are only "reported" accidents. So by your own statistics the overall percentage of accidents occurring in the train yard is OBVIOUSLY on the rise. How do you explain this? Where is this 40% reduction in yard incidents due to the implementation of Remote Control? The death of Jody Herstine was completely unnecessary and for the FRA to publicly assert that a single man operation involving this magnitude of equipment is safe....is nothing less than irresponsible. We expect alot more of your leadership Mr. Rutter, and we are expecting it quickly.

We look forward to your immediate response.

Citizens Demanding Safer Regulation of America's Railroads!!!!





Thank you for your continued support,

RRESQ

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by pfrench68
[

The full 30 page report gives details of some of the accidents.

BNSF INCIDENTS INVOLVING
REMOTE CONTROL LOCOMOTIVES
Updated- June 16, 2003
Summary of Cause Factors
Incidents- 181
Human Factor- 117- 64%
Miscellaneous - 28- 16%
Track- 23- 13%
Equipment- 7- 4%
Signal- 6- 3%

If you check your information, you'll see that 64% were "human error". I will accept that the 4% "equipment" might include the RCO equipment. I do not have documentation, but a gut feeling tells me that well over 50% of accidents with engineers involed are also attributible to "human error". Show me where the equipment caused the accident.

Trainphil

[Anonymous]

You also have to remember the carriers decide the cause of the accident and they are not unbiased.

Just because the equipment didn't fail doesn't mean that it wasn't caused by the procedures necessary to run the RCO. For example, if there is a signal loss the RCL sets all of the brakes including the train brakes. In some cases that is not the proper thing to do. If someone is shoving 100 cars with air in the head 15 or 20, that last thing you want to do is dump the air. It would be like riding on the end of a bull whip. Many of the accidents happen because there is no one watching the end of a movement when they hit something, quite often they hit with the locomotive. Neither of these examples were equipment failure. But the were caused by the different manner in which the job is preformed because it is an RCO.

Since I have been working on the railroad two switchman and one roadmaster have died in my terminal. The roadmaster was hit by a car rolling off the hump while he was on a track the yardmaster did not block. Both switchman were killed in the bowl on hot tracks by cars set in motion by the hump. They weren't paying close enough attention to their surroundings. Operating the box distracts from the attention paid to the surroundings.

The whole mechanical failure statistic is a red herring meant to take away the focus from the real dangers of the RCO. They want to say the RCO is save because the equipment did not fail, nothing is further from the truth.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Is this about safety or is this about BLE jobs? Be honest with yourself.

[Anonymous]

It is about honestly. The RCO issue has never been approached by the carriers in an honest manner.

While were at it, what is your motivation?

[techguy57]

I'm not the biggest fan of RC locos but to a point I can see their potential benefits. My only concern would be whether the gains outweigh the losses, specifically the loss of human life. In that respect, I will always be skeptical because while the loss of a machine may cost a large amount of money, the loss of a life can not be measured by ANY amount of money.

To respond to nkp587's statement, "human error" is the cause of a lot of things. It is the cause of automobile accidents, shootings, airplane crashes, wars, etc. because more often than not the error is an error in judgement. If someone was killed in a car accident by a drunken driver, wouldn't that be "human error" on the part of the drunken driver for getting behind the wheel in the first place. Following that logic, one could argue that it is "human error" that the locomotive isn't advanced enough to detect the presence of a human being in the way and that someone despite knowing this let it operate. I understand your point but "human error" is going to happen no matter what so long as there are humans to make mistakes. Even if the whole system were to be automated and completely fenced off, there would still be the chance that a program writer missed a bug in the system. What would you suggest to combat the element of human error?

Anyway, I digress. My point is this: Accidents do happen, but by operating RC locos are railroads encouraging more accidents or preventing them? I'm not sure there is a clear cut answer, it probably varies from railroad to railroad. But in my opinion if having a crew on board would make the difference in saving one life, that would be enough for me, costs be damned. If the long term shows RC locos have a better record preserving human life then let them run, but personally I know I'd feel safer knowing I had someone else watching my back. Maybe its a Utopian vision, but I can dream.

[wabash1]

QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH

Is this about safety or is this about BLE jobs? Be honest with yourself.

Being honest how can you say it is ble jobs? The truth of the matter is i dont care if i lose a job in the seat the young guys who think they have the remotes will be gone. bumped as i have senority on them. and still belong to the ble. I was a utu member for 3 months and will never be a utu member in my life if i can help it. its not jobs its safety I can tell you never read half of what a engineer or a real switchman has wrote here as its been said before you can feel what a train is doing control a coupling not on a remote. I will say this I know of 3 instances where remotes have run through switches and shoved back causing several 100k damage. and no disapline was given to the remote crews. why they wanted it covered up to make the remote look good. in short if i ever get through a switch i will fight a discrimination suit that will be in all news papers.

Why so much concern for the remotes? is it that the average joe off the street thinks he might get a railroads job now? running a remote thinking he is a engineer? the lic you get to run a remote means you stand on the ground or hang on the side of the cars and run your cut of cars to the spot they are to be at. in no way are they considered a engineer. and never will be. let all the jobs go to remote. all road jobs and yard jobs it will be the utu worst night mare come true in that it will be a one man crew engineer only , and they will all belong to the ble. loss of jobs not for the ble only utu.

[Anonymous]

Every one says they cover up the accidents of the Remotes.
Running through a switch is not the remotes fault.Again it
looks like operator error.This is all about job loss and change.
No one likes change.Change is going to happen and there is
nothing that we can do to stop it.

[wabash1]

yes this is true it is operator error but if there was a engineer on the point, this would never happen. instead they have a guy who is several cars away from the point and never checks a switch or sees if anything is comming just runs the engine to clear the rear so he can shove. not being in place to see things means that some kind of damage will happen. and usually does.

[Anonymous]

bigedd, your are incorrect. It is the remotes! The procedures that are followed when remotes are used cause switches to be run through.

There ere times when movements are unprotected in the name of productivity. There are times when one switchman waits at a joint and the 2nd switchman pulls over the switch, lines the switch, then sends the movement to the 1st switchman. Who protected the movement as they pulled over the switch?

There are times when the operators do not pitch and catch because it is inconvenient. This happens especially when tracks are coupled. One operator sits on the engine and the 2nd goes back to couple the track. Movements are made back and forth without communication between the switchmen.

There are times that things the Remote Control Locomotive does cause an accident even though that was the way it was designed to operate. When shoving a large cut of cars if radio contact is lost the RCL dumps the air. That is what it is suppose to do. Unfortunately the RCL has no way of knowing if it even has cars let alone the sophistication to handle stopping a large cut of cars properly. The result might be as little as a broken knuckle or drawbar. But it has happened that the switchman on the end has been injured by the slack action.

[dekemd]

Many RC ARE caused by human error. The reason why there is human error is that humans can only do so many things at one time. A switchman using RCO is checking his switch lists, throwing switches, pulling release levers, watching the movement, AND trying to run the RC unit, all while hanging off the side of a car. It's no different than someone talking on the cell phone while driving and causing an accident. You can only divide your attention so much before you start overlooking things. Some cities and states think this is such a danger that they have bans on driving while talking on a cell phone. Seems to me that not being able to fully concentrate on using a 200 ton locomotive is a whole lot more dangerous.

The only way to safely use RCO is to slow way down so you have more time to make sure everything is set right. This would ruin efficiency and productivity, which are the reasons the railroad gave for going to RCO.

RCO would be good for industrial sites where you have a locomotive and a few cars and little traffic, but in a crowded rail yard with several tracks and hundreds of cars, I think RCO is a liability.

Derrick

[WDGF]

I'll preface this by pointing out that I know virtually nothing about this subject...

What are the chances of some meddling idiot or worse, someone with malicious intent hacking into these remote systems? Or, is this risk about the same as that to the rest of the system?

My thinking is also that the operator on-board is getting a great deal more useable feedback for what the machine's doing than one in a tower somewhere. It seems to me that for this system to work properly there needs to be a vast amount of information about every aspect of the yard, including what every car is doing, to be collected and presented so that the operator can understand it at a glance. From what I'm reading, it doesn't seem that the programming for these systems has that level of complexity.

I don't know enough to be pro or con, it's just some of my random thoughts.

[Anonymous]

According to the San Antonio Express-News dated Tuesday, December 9, 2003, Metro Section: "Feds call remote-control trains safe"
This article gives only a few details about the death of Jody Herstine.
It mentions that he was a married father of two, that he had been a switchman for five years, and that he was operating TWO remote-controlled locomotives when one of them ran him over, resulting in his death, and that he was alone at the time. After that, there's plenty of data concerning the "safety" of R/C switchers, and some "facts" from Canadian National (CN). Apparently the Canadians have had zero fatalities using R/C locos, but since this accident happened on the Union Pacific, who probably do things differently from CN...

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Several issues are involved in the Remote Control issue.
Is safety an issue? Yes, it is, but it is an issue in virtually everything we do.
Will banning remote control solve any problems? Not necessarily, despite what is implied in other postings; derailments, accidents and fatalities have occurred and will continue to occur even with an engineer in the cab.

To many outsiders, the issue tends to look more like a jurisdictional dispute between the UTU and BLE since the UTU signed off on remote control but BLE didn't. It also resembles the diesel fireman issue in that the safety issue is being raised again.

Unfortunately, unions rarely look good to the public when work rules issues are involved since it appears that they are more interested in preserving jobs for members than actually addressing the issues. To the public, unions are often synonymous with what are perceived as ridiculous work rules restrictions, and in a variety of businesses other than railroading. It may not be right, but it is the perception.

Both the UTU and BLE need to seriously address the issue of RC safety jointly by something more realistic than an outright ban.

[tree68]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Tank


According to the San Antonio Express-News dated Tuesday, December 9, 2003, Metro Section: "Feds call remote-control trains safe"
This article gives only a few details about the death of Jody Herstine.
It mentions that he was a married father of two, that he had been a switchman for five years, and that he was operating TWO remote-controlled locomotives when one of them ran him over, resulting in his death, and that he was alone at the time. After that, there's plenty of data concerning the "safety" of R/C switchers, and some "facts" from Canadian National (CN). Apparently the Canadians have had zero fatalities using R/C locos, but since this accident happened on the Union Pacific, who probably do things differently from CN...

So, when are the US railroads and unions going to make a trip to Canada to find out how come they have used R/C for 10 years without significant loss (or so it would appear)? Meanwhile, we're killing people and having other accidents left and right. To me, that would be an indication that we are doing something wrong with how we are using R/C.

Any new technology comes with a learning curve. If we applied the same logic to early locomotives as we're applying here there wouldn't be a railroad industry in the first place. Instead, they learned from their mistakes and improved the product. In this case the product is the combination of the R/C and its operator.

From what I've read here so far, it looks like the railroads are attempting to do the same thing with R/C as they do with manned locos. Maybe it's time to review that and make adjustments. That trip to Canada would probably be very fruitful, if they apply what they learn.

I also haven't seen numbers comparing R/C incidents with manned loco incidents in comparable circumstances... At least with DWI accidents, the stats usually refer to what percentage of highway deaths involve alcohol. How many R/C incidents occur per [some measure, like loco hours] vs manned locos? Now we would have a point of discussion.

[wabash1]

I can tell you that the general manager told us at one of the meetings we had with him that when they went to canada to look at the remotes they watch a girl on a hump yard pull 75 cars up to the top and then switched out the train by herself in 30 min. then he said if they can do it we can do it. they only thing that they have sofar that we have not installed is pods that transmit a signal of how vlose to the top or to the switch they are. and this will be a issue we will take care of soon. this was their bases for claiming remotes were better. the only hole in this was she was working in the hump yard. flat switching is totally differant. and i believe in a small industry where you are the only thing working its ok or at a hump yard its fine. to grab 10 cars at a time from a cut of 70 and go switch them out is not only slow but dangerous. you can make anything look great in the right setting. dont believe it. go look at glamour shot photos .