G-D,
I hope that your justice system is NEVER NEVER NEVER like yours!
Here we have crossing laws that indicate it is the vehicle drivers
responsibility to ensure that there are no oncomming trains during or at
any time of a corssing attempt. Now this becomes a little more complex when
CTCSS is added, in that the Rail Ways now take responsibility for the
corssing (Corssings with lights) in that this is treated the same as a red
traffic light. If is is not active at the time of the accident, then
negligence can be claimed against the RR. Gets very messy. Did you know
that most train drivers will make some 500000 RR crossing during their
carrier? And that you would even know the name of a dirver unless they have
been involved in an incident. (Yes Yes I know more usless trivia
information from Dennis)


Dennis






At 18:17 14/10/99 -0400, you wrote:
>On Wed, 13 Oct 1999 16:19:29 -0700 Mark Willis <mwillis@FOXINTERNET.NET>
>writes:
>> Distribute the rockets, one smaller pair per car, would make better
>> sense to me.
>
>OK, this is properly marked [OT], etc. so I'll turn the discussion
>political as this is the real reason the railroads don't have a better
>way to stop a train.
>
>No matter how good the brakes are, there are going to be situations where
>the train can't stop in time.  Whenever the train doesn't stop in time,
>the railroad will very likely be sued.
>
>Suppose the train has a system of rockets on every other car, installed
>at a cost of $X, and the rockets worked properly, but the train still
>didn't stop in time.  Lawyers for the person who happened to be in the
>way of the train will not be impressed.  In fact the rocket system proves
>a weakness for the railroad.  The plaintiff's lawyers will ask "Why
>didn't they put rockets on *every* car, then the train could have stopped
>in time."  They continue by pointing out the obvious reason is that
>rockets on every car would cost approximately $2X, and the railroad's
>"price of a child's life" isn't that high.  Though you might consider
>this logic rediculous rubbish, it has great pull with juries.
>
>So the best thing to do is not investigate new stopping technology, lest
>this dangerous spiral of having anything less than the most expensive
>possible being unsatisfactory.
>
>Another equally probable scenario involves the retro-rocket train not
>stopping in time because one or more of the rockets didn't fire for some
>reason, though it did eventually stop with the air brakes.  You might
>think that that is still OK because at least they had equipped the train
>with two methods for stopping, making it much less dangerous than before
>when there was only one method.  But it is easy to convince a jury that
>the railroad had loosed a dangerous, defective, poorly maintained train
>on the public.
>
>Because of this nonsense, the only way new safety devices are ever
>fielded on trains, cars, etc. is by the demand of the government.  Then
>the railroad can say "this train had all the safety features required by
>the government."  If you're thinking that the dirty business that trial
>lawyers do is good in some way because it forces manufacturers to make
>safer products instead of the government having to pile on more and more
>regulations, actually it's just the opposite.
>
>
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