How Congress Failed to Stop the Fatal Amtrak Crash

[thelakelander]

KRISTON CAPPS

Positive Train Control could have prevented Tuesday's crash. Congress made it mandatory in 2008. But it also continues to cut funding needed to fully implement it.

Investigators don't know yet why an Amtrak passenger train was traveling twice the speed limit at Frankford Junction when it derailed in Philadelphia. But officials have the technology that would have prevented the fatal crash that killed eight people and injured scores more on Tuesday night.

A communications safety system known as Positive Train Control could have slowed the speeding Amtrak train before it entered into the curve at more than 100 miles per hour. This system—part monitoring system, part emergency brake, part remote control—isn't obscure or hypothetical. The 110th Congress made PTC mandatory in 2008.

Congress made Positive Train Control mandatory in 2008, but the safety system has yet to be implemented across much of the nation, thanks in large part to legislative deadlock.
But the safety system still has yet to be implemented across much of the nation, thanks in large part to legislative deadlock.

"Had such a system been installed on this section of track, this accident would not have occurred," said Robert Sumwalt, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, in a press conference on Wednesday evening.

Full article: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/05/how-congress-failed-to-stop-the-fatal-amtrak-crash/393236/

[mtraininjax]

And Global Warming legislation could have prevented the deadly Tornadoes in the midwest. So what?

[fsquid]

They installed Automatic Train Control at that curve over the weekend, so it sounds like Amtrak is being mismanaged.