News story here.
You know, for all the safety first rhetoric, a former CEO of one of my employers stated things really bluntly and really put things in perspective. " Good companies don't hurt people."
I get that you can't fix stupid, and you can't foresee every problem. But when you see a Fire Protection District public information officer says "It's not uncommon that we've had accidents at that crossing," then what the heck are you doing about it RR's?
We have needless loss of life in the country daily. Corporate profits have been made Holier than anything else. But let's face it when we really want to get something done we do it. The chance of death in a automobile to automobile accident are a small fraction of what they used to be due to increased safety standards and private engineering improvements.
I get that the costs are stupidly high. But honestly I am starting not to care. I believe in the RRing industry, enough to buy a few shares in some RR's for myself. But honestly I just don't get how we can allow there to be an acceptable loss of life number for moving goods and people across the country. It just shouldn't be acceptable. And not only the public, but how about the Engineer or other crew personnel who have to live with the fact that just doing their job one evening suddenly resulted in a crash the cost the lives of three people so far and shattered families.
This is BNSF and Amtrak, not Joe's short line doing 10 mph and taking a loan to meet payroll. We have to do better than this.
(sorry for the rant this morning folks, but sometimes the thoughts just have to out.)
