Washington subway crash

[classicman]

WE need a new program like the one that built the Hoover dam! My vote is currently for a friggin wall much like the Great wall of China - Heck that thing is 400 miles long. Ours won't be nearly that long. We can also put nice clean medical facilities on the Mexican side so that the illegals can have their children safely on THEIR side. This creates a huge number of long lasting jobs, prevents the illegal immigration problem an reduces the American burden on everything, most importantly healthcare.

[sugarpop]

While I agree illegals put a strain on the system, more importantly is health care for profit. Until that issue is addressed, the system will never get better.

[Happy Monkey]

Google Earth has an image with a train directly at the end of your yellow line? Impressive!

[Shawnee123]

I heard that a passenger had told his family, the night before, that he would hop the train to work in the morning. It's as if it were a set-up! [\levity]

[jinx]

That's a great post glatt, thanks.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Google Earth has an image with a train directly at the end of your yellow line? Impressive!

Yeah, it was lucky! And it was a 6 car train, like the ones involved in this accident, so I could measure it and put place marks in Google Earth to show almost exactly where the stopped train was. And then measure back from those points to see the sight lines.

Originally Posted by jinx

That's a great post glatt, thanks.

Thanks!

[Beestie]

Superb analysis, Glatt.

[Happy Monkey]

Fairly accurate, too. The brakes were apparently on for 300-400 feet, or about 120 meters.

[glatt]

Thanks for that info HM. 300-400 feet, huh? That's a much better driver reaction time than I expected. Judging from the damage, the train must have been going very fast. In fact, many of the passengers said the train hit at full speed. So it sounds like the brakes were not very effective. I'd expect the speed to be reduced dramatically over that distance, based on my own experience on Metro. I bet only some of the cars had brakes that were working, or there were other problems with the brakes.

[TheMercenary]

Darwinism hard at work.

[ZenGum]

That's good work, Glatt, but I'm not *entirely* convinced. Maybe the track is raised so the driver can see over the green areas beside the track. Does the driver sit on the left, right, or center of the train? Is the seat elevated? How are the pylons on the bridge aligned? What angle was the sun coming from?

There are so many possible sources of minor error that a couple of little things like this could add up to seriously affect the calculations.

That said, you figures are probably in the ballpark.

To me, two facts stand out - the investigators say the brake pedal had been pressed down, yet passengers report feeling no braking. Add that to all that stuff about old train cars with poorly maintained brakes, and I'm happy to jump to a conclusion.

[Happy Monkey]

The driver sits on the right, IIRC, and is not elevated. The track was not elevated.

The rails show 300-400 feet of braking. I would imagine that in a seatbeltless vehicle like a subway car, the slamming of the emergency brakes would feel much like a collision, so there may be confusion. The brakes were apparently triggered by a button, not a pedal, so they are probably pretty close to all-or-nothing.

[glatt]

For what it's worth, we have had a very wet spring, and foliage is very lush here right now. It's quite possible that the vegetation along the side of the tracks is more overgrown in real life than in the image found on Google Earth, and the sight lines may be even shorter as a result with all the weeds hanging off the chain link fence. I also don't know where the supports for the bridge are located, since they aren't visible in the Google Earth image, so I measured as if there were none. The presence of bridge supports would also make the sight lines worse than my post.

My point was that 355 meters was about the farthest away the driver could possibly see any part of the stopped train. My gut tells me that it was more like 250 meters before it became obvious.

[Happy Monkey]

Plus, I wonder how well even the most dedicated person would do on that website if it took hours or even days for the trigger to occur.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Plus, I wonder how well even the most dedicated person would do on that website if it took hours or even days for the trigger to occur.

let alone six months, as in her case.