Americans are becoming increasingly concerned that their jobs are at risk. Immigrants are less to be feared in this regard than robots. Automation and artificial intelligence are poised to disrupt our way of life in ways we haven’t anticipated. It sounds like doom and gloom.
But then comes a story that can’t help but make a reader angry. Rampant and serial incompetence can cost human lives. I read one of these tragic stories last month. I didn’t know whether to shake my head or my fist. Some jobs deserve to be eliminated by automation.
On Dec. 18, 2017, an Amtrak Cascades train toppled over a bridge onto Interstate 5 in neighboring Washington. Three passengers were killed. Sixty-five others were injured, including eight people in their vehicles on the highway.
It was the inaugural run of a realigned Amtrak route between Washington and Oregon. Neither the engineer nor the conductor were familiar with the new route. They were given too few visual aids to help them know the train’s location.
The situation was set up for failure, concluded National Transportation Safety Board investigators. “Remember that curve,” a road foreman warned the train’s engineer. The warning didn’t help.
As the train topped 80 mph near Dupont, Wash., alarms sounded inside. The overspeed alarm was telling the engineer he was going a few miles-per-hour faster than recommended for the straight stretch.
The bells distracted the engineer. The train’s conductor was no help. Both missed two signs posted within two miles of the curve, warning them to slow down. “During this period, they rarely looked outside the train,” according to the NTSB investigation.
The train hit the curve at the Point Defiance Bypass going 78 mph. The train should have been slowed to 30 mph at Milepost 19.86. By the time they understood the situation, any hope of reducing the train’s speed to prevent derailment was lost.
Three people died and 65 others were injured. How many others saw the crash and wondered whether they could ever feel safe on a train again? Faced with such dramatic consequences, the NTSB took an unconscionable 18 months to complete its investigation.
There’s only one hero in this story and that’s the road foreman who tried to warn the engineer. The conductor and the engineer, the trainers and everyone responsible for ensuring the safety of the public failed miserably. Did any of those people lose their jobs? We don’t know.
We have the automation tools to prevent mishaps of this sort, but the U.S. Congress has been slow to require it. Positive Train Control is designed to automatically override an engineer’s poor judgment. Rep. Peter DeFazio has consistently pushed for its implementation.
The engineer and conductor allowed Train 501 over the Point Defiance Bypass going too fast. Everyone else connected to the tragedy has been too slow — NTSB investigators, personnel and union managers, Congressional regulators. I see a lot of jobs just begging to be eliminated.
Automation has been portrayed as the bogeyman, but intelligence that is not artificial has failed us. We can’t count on that road foreman to be everywhere.
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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.
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