Metro and Safety
I’ve been studying safety analysis and process lately and I saw this item about the Washington DC metro:
A team of independent safety inspectors was nearly hit last month by a Metro train that appeared to be traveling at full speed and making no attempt to slow, as required by agency rules.
Wow, way to go; that’s how to impress those safety experts! There’s a history of track worker injury and death with the Metro, and the article says there’s some history of antagonism between train operators and track workers. I have no idea of the issues there - the article doesn’t go into that depth. But clearly the track workers get the short end of that stick.
Safety issues seem to be largely system issues. Safety problems are caused less by single problems but by a set of things happening together in just the wrong combination. In aviation that’s usually taught as the chain of errors leading to an accident. Or sometimes as the swiss-cheese shield against errors - where the holes line up an error can get through.
But then there’s the obvious single problem here - slow down in a work area!