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AdrianCX • yesterday at 11:34 AM • 3 replies • view on HN

so in this case, couldnt conductor just say - make it green, not my problem, staying still until then


Replies

AngryData • today at 2:54 AM

Theoretically yes, but in practice if you tell your boss to screw off multiple times a year because they don't want to spend the money to fix the base problem, you will be replaced or fired.

In some industries that is how they keep costs low while pretending they are being safe. They have alarms or procedures that say something is bad or wrong, but fixing some problems costs more money than it saves so they want them to be ignored, and managers will get angry and admonish you or eventually fire you if you keep following procedure and stopping to check problems. So eventually they build a team of people essentially trained to ignore problems. Which is why many oil pipelines still use ancient and unreliable leak detectors, they know those systems are unreliable and the operators will get alarm fatigue from the 200 false alarms, and that way they also ignore when a real problem happens, and worse case for the company they scapegoat the operator. They don't care that 2,000 gallons of oil leaked into the wilderness and poisoned the land if it would cost 2,000+ gallons of oil profit to shut down and repair the leak. They have a financial interest to not fix it.

8n4vidtmkvmk • today at 6:48 AM

If i understand correctly, it was green. Meaning the next block was indeed clear but the other train was stopped in the same block and there aren't supposed to be 2 trains in the same block. That's the disagreement between the new virtual system and the old system.

1718627440 • yesterday at 11:39 AM

Why would they trust "a random blinking green light", but not a written and stamped order? Yes, they could do that (and sometimes it will actually prevent an accident), but it will be more being a snowflake, then being a decision for safety. A conductor is simply not responsible for whether it's safe to drive on a given track. Their equivalent is not a car driver.

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