Washington subway crash

[dar512]

I think you're a bit hasty in flipping the bozo bit, Glatt. I didn't see anything in that article that says that they've been able to reproduce the conditions that caused the accident. And I can tell you from experience that debugging can be hard. Especially so when you've got hardware and software involved. Not to mention that part of the circuit is train tracks that live outdoors.

Before pointing and laughing at these folks I'd want to know if they have access to all the circuitry and microcode involved. If they don't, they're trying to debug this thing blind. I'd also like to know if they've been allowed to try to reproduce this under working conditions. They may not. Metro may not want to risk squishing one or two of their trains to find the answer to this issue.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by dar512

I didn't see anything in that article that says that they've been able to reproduce the conditions that caused the accident.

It wasn't in the article I just linked to, but there was a test shortly after the accident that recreated the conditions and the result was identical to the crash, except they didn't actually smash the trains together.

Article about it here. Three months ago.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board performed the simulation Wednesday night. In the test, investigators positioned a train in the same location as the train that was rear-ended Monday. The system failed to detect that the idled test train was there

I know it's not easy to figure out, and they are only human, but it's been 3 months. They have had the track closed to train traffic for that entire time, available for study. It's just sitting there. They have to single track around the site and it's causing serious delays for the poor saps on the Red line.

The sensor manufacturer is Alstom Signaling, and it's some sort of problem with their sensors. Or a problem with how their sensors are installed into the system.

Shawnee is right with her o-ring joke. We need Richard Feynman to stick one of these sensors into a glass of ice water and figure it out.

[glatt]

Just for the record, they finally opened that stretch of track this week. But they still don't know what's wrong with the sensors, so all the trains are still being operated manually. My guess is that this is now how things are going to run on the system. The new standard.