The Economics of Railroad Safety

The Economics of Railroad Safety

Author: Ian Savage

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 146155571X

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The American public has a fascination with railroad wrecks that goes back a long way. One hundred years ago, staged railroad accidents were popular events. At the Iowa State fair in 1896, 89,000 people paid $20 each, at current prices, to see two trains, throttles wide open, collide with each other. "Head-on Joe" Connolly made a business out of "cornfield meets" holding seventy-three events in thirty-six years. Picture books of train wrecks do good business presumably because a train wreck can guarantee a spectacular destruction of property without the messy loss of life associated with aircraft accidents. A "train wreck" has also entered the popular vocabulary in a most unusual way. When political manoeuvering leads to failure to pass the federal budget, and a shutdown is likely of government services, this is widely called a "train wreck. " In business and team sports, bumbling and lack of coordination leading to a spectacular and public failure to perform is also called "causing a train wreck. " A person or organization who is disorganized may be labelled a "train wreck. " It is therefore not surprising that the public perception of the safety of railroads centers on images of twisted metal and burning tank cars, and a general feeling that these events occur quite often. After a series of railroad accidents, such as occurred in the winter of 1996 or the summer of 1997, there are inevitable calls that government "should do something.


Railway Safety, Reliability, and Security: Technologies and Systems Engineering

Railway Safety, Reliability, and Security: Technologies and Systems Engineering

Author: Flammini, Francesco

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2012-05-31

Total Pages: 487

ISBN-13: 146661644X

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Human errors, as well as deliberate sabotage, pose a considerable danger to passengers riding on the modern railways and have created disastrous consequences. To protect civilians against both intentional and unintentional threats, rail transportation has become increasingly automated. Railway Safety, Reliability, and Security: Technologies and Systems Engineering provides engineering students and professionals with a collection of state-of-the-art methodological and technological notions to support the development and certification of ‘real-time safety-critical’ railway control systems, as well as the protection of rail transportation infrastructures.


Positive Guidance in Traffic Control

Positive Guidance in Traffic Control

Author: Gerson J. Alexander

Publisher:

Published: 1975

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13:

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The progress that has been made in developing the positive guidance concept is documented, and the meaning of positive guidance, the philosophy of driver performance upon which it is based the nature of the driving task at those locations where positive guidance is applicable, and a procedure for its application are discussed. This report describes what must be done to improve the information system at hazardous locations. Positive guidance which is an information system matched to the facility characteristics and driver attributes, is based on the premise that a driver can be given sufficient information where he needs it and in the form that he can best use to avoid hazards.


Comprehensive Costs of Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Crashes

Comprehensive Costs of Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Crashes

Author: Daniel Brod

Publisher: Transportation Research Board

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 119

ISBN-13: 0309283485

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"TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 755: Comprehensive Costs of Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Crashes describes a process for estimating the costs of highway-rail grade crossing crashes. A spreadsheet-based tool to facilitate use of the cost estimation process is available online." --Publisher description.


Death Rode the Rails

Death Rode the Rails

Author: Mark Aldrich

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2009-11-09

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780801894022

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For most of the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, railroads dominated American transportation. They transformed life and captured the imagination. Yet by 1907 railroads had also become the largest cause of violent death in the country, that year claiming the lives of nearly twelve thousand passengers, workers, and others. In Death Rode the Rails Mark Aldrich explores the evolution of railroad safety in the United States by examining a variety of incidents: spectacular train wrecks, smaller accidents in shops and yards that devastated the lives of workers and their families, and the deaths of thousands of women and children killed while walking on or crossing the street-grade tracks. The evolution of railroad safety, Aldrich argues, involved the interplay of market forces, science and technology, and legal and public pressures. He considers the railroad as a system in its entirety: operational realities, technical constraints, economic history, internal politics, and labor management. Aldrich shows that economics initially encouraged American carriers to build and operate cheap and dangerous lines. Only over time did the trade-off between safety and output—shaped by labor markets and public policy—motivate carriers to develop technological improvements that enhanced both productivity and safety. A fascinating account of one of America's most important industries and its dangers, Death Rode the Rails will appeal to scholars of economics and the history of transportation, technology, labor, regulation, safety, and business, as well as to railroad enthusiasts.