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from the GIGO?-DINO!-Data-In-Nothing-Out dept.
The National Transportation Safety Board has said that a data recorder recovered from the crash of a New Jersey Transit train in Hoboken recorded no information about the incident:
A data recorder that could have helped investigators answer why a New Jersey Transit train crashed in Hoboken last week was not working, the National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday. "Unfortunately, the event recorder was not functioning during this trip," NTSB Vice Chairman Bella Dinh-Zarr said. Investigators said the data recorder was over 20 years old.
The NTSB is looking for a second data recorder from a newer passenger car. The recorder could provide information on the train's speed, use of brakes and throttle position. The train's engineer, identified as Thomas Gallagher, told NTSB investigators the train entered the Hoboken station at 10 mph. Witnesses have said the train was speeding as it entered the station instead of slowing down.
New Jersey Transit had already been under scrutiny for safety issues before the crash. A roof (possibly containing asbestos) which had collapsed on top of the train during the accident is now preventing investigators from inspecting the scene.
Also at Reuters and The Guardian .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @07:01AM
Back in early 2014 I responded to an ad for a computer administrator, in San Francisco.
It turned out to be a position with a company called Parsons that was working out of a few office trailers in a gritty corner of the SOMA (South-Of-Market[-Street]-Area), right by the train tracks.
The work involved retrofitting Bay Area commuter trains with some sort of electronic wireless computerized signaling system which was being offered as an extra layer of safety, but which, I suspect, also was intended to eliminate humans from the operation of the train.
The idea was for wireless sensors to be installed and to transmit information to the trains so that the trains would know when to slow down (for instance) before a human would even have line-of-sight on the problem.
It all sounded good. I was told it was part of a nationwide mandate for safer trains. Who's against more safety?
But the company - Parsons - was run by old alligators, though ... and I had absolutely no desire to spend the next year or so rubbing elbows with people who'd smell my breath for alcohol and rifle through my desk drawers looking for contraband and test my office furniture for possibly illegal metabolites.
One of the old alligators was their human resources hag. She was kind enough to send me off on a wild goose chase to a storage locker in far Northern California, demanding proof of prior employment, while her peer alligators here on the West Coast were demanding that I start work, on the very same day. The employment contract collapsed as a result.
I was relieved because the whole thing sounded pretty dodgy and Rube-Goldberg-ish and vulnerable to being hacked ... and I had zero interest in being the guy with his head on the block at the subsequent Senate hearing after a hundred people were killed in a high speed train accident that looked as if it had been machine-inflicted, but, perhaps, had not.
Food for thought.