Insane

I like the headline another media outlet used for the story.

"World's Dumbest Hellcat Driver Arrested After Posting Video Doing 198 MPH On Highway."

---

Grant
Darwin NT

'Heroic' Toddler Saved Brother's Life After Crash Down Ravine
A toddler wandering the road in Arkansas apparently made his way there from the scene of a car crash down a deep ravine, officials said.

... "If it had not been for the three year old child being able to escape the car wreckage and finding his was back to the roadway, it could have easily been three deaths," Lt. Nathan Greeley, of the Ouachita County Sheriff's Office, wrote in a press release. "The three year old is HEROIC in my eyes, he saved his brother's life. God was by their side the entire time and allowed them to survive."

Greeley added that what had occurred was nothing short of a miracle.

---

Police said an armed citizen stopped a knife-welding Mexican National on Monday who threatened a Greyhound busload of passengers and caused the bus to crash.

... (The bad guy) was confronted by an armed citizen who ordered him to drop the knife. (The bad guy) complied and the citizen held him at gunpoint until the police arrived.

Passengers reported only minor injuries from the crash.

---

Why bond ($250,000) was even set on the latest offence for this low life is beyond me.
He shot at five women on the road — because he thinks only men should drive, Texas cops say

First, he said shooting the driver next to him was “in self-defense” because she swerved over toward his lane.

When he was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon stemming from the shooting of a woman in Katy, Texas, he told authorities he had done it before — maybe five times, as the Star-Telegram reported last month.

... Investigators with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office say that Dagostino has targeted female drivers specifically on the streets of Katy and the surrounding area, citing Facebook posts in which he describes female drivers as “incompetent” and writing “that their sole purpose is to give birth to male children,” according to those court documents.

... It’s netted Dagostino another aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge, but this time, his bond is set at $250,000 according to jail records.

---

2 dead after dump truck collides with TRE train and explodes, authorities say
EULESS ,TX (Dallas/Fort Worth Metro Area)

Two people were killed in a crash between a dump truck and a Trinity Railway Express train on Saturday afternoon in northeast Tarrant County, according to multiple police departments and MedStar.

The crash happened shortly after noon at 12500 Calloway Cemetery Road — near Trinity Boulevard and North Collins Street — when a dump truck drove through the crossing as a westbound train was passing, Mark Bell, a DART spokesperson said.

The two people who were inside the dump truck were killed in the collision. Multiple TRE passengers were also injured, Arlington police said.

Officials originally said the wreck involved a semi.

In all, 11 people were taken to area hospitals, according to emergency medical personnel. Two were listed in critical condition and three were listed in fair condition.

Six people were listed in good condition while 30 others were treated and released ...

---

Ouch
One thing is for certain, that driver WILL be up on a DB (Disciplinary Board hearing).

Once all the doors are closed, a circuit is completed & a pilot light is lit up, that circuit gets broken...

Ouch
One thing is for certain, that driver WILL be up on a DB (Disciplinary Board hearing).

Once all the doors are closed, a circuit is completed & a pilot light is lit up, that circuit gets broken...

If all the electronics are working as intended. They will have to do a full tear down.

Or doesn't it have a automatic safety that won't allow the train to move, unless an over ride is engaged?

Once all the doors are closed, a circuit is completed & a pilot light is lit up, that circuit gets broken...

A failure in the circuit should result in a "door still open" indication, even if it's not.
ie- it should be fail safe.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Once all the doors are closed, a circuit is completed & a pilot light is lit up, that circuit gets broken...

A failure in the circuit should result in a "door still open" indication, even if it's not.
ie- it should be fail safe.

But is it? Or can there be some wiring fault that buried inside some wall that allows it to show closed when open? If two wires are in the same conduit, they can short or one or the other can have an open. Which, short or open, says doors closed?

Designing systems to be fail safe so that no matter the fault they are safe is not nearly as easy as a wet behind the ears engineer thinks.

Once all the doors are closed, a circuit is completed & a pilot light is lit up, that circuit gets broken...

A failure in the circuit should result in a "door still open" indication, even if it's not.
ie- it should be fail safe.

But is it? Or can there be some wiring fault that buried inside some wall that allows it to show closed when open? If two wires are in the same conduit, they can short or one or the other can have an open. Which, short or open, says doors closed?

Designing systems to be fail safe so that no matter the fault they are safe is not nearly as easy as a wet behind the ears engineer thinks.

Should I mention that modern passenger train here won't release their brakes until all doors are properly shut?

Cheers.

The main "door proved closed" system relies on a mechanical latch that is "up" when the door is open, but is forced down when closed, there is a micro-switch to detect the position of that latch. There is also an independent position sensor that is supposed to detect the "absence" of a door leaf in the open position. These two then feed into a round-train circuit (actually two "clockwise" and "anti-clockwise", which are then summed to give the a "doors not proven shut" signal for the whole train. The two sensors have opposite logical states when the door is in the closed position, and take different routes through the vehicle, all this is done to reduce the possibility of what's in the video.
In the video one can clearly see that the door is "wide open", thus should be detected as "not in the closed position", so that circuit alone should have prevented the train from being able to take power. Also the latch is either jammed down (then the door wouldn't open), or broken.
We will have to await the report for this incident - I dare say the RAIB will be crawling all over the train and its maintenance records...

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Designing systems to be fail safe so that no matter the fault they are safe is not nearly as easy as a wet behind the ears engineer thinks.

Yep.
Video security system that had an alarm output in case there was an issue with the video recorder. The problem was the alarm output was "High" when there was a fault with the unit.
When the power went off, and the VCR couldn't record, there was no "High" output to indicate there was fault with the recorder.
Took a bit of mucking around to make it so a "Low" output indicated a fault.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

This incident rather proves the case being made by trade unions in a current series of strikes on some of the UK's main-line railway routes: the importance of having a safety-trained company employee free to patrol the passenger areas of the train while it is in motion.

The sort of urban metro train shown in this video will normally be driver-only operated. We don't know when or how he or she became aware of the problem, but they certainly couldn't investigate in person without stopping the train, isolating the controls, and blocking the line. Under the circumstances (short distance between stations, train scheduled to stop at every station), continuing to the next station and dealing with it there was probably the best course of action - it made the subsequent full evacuation (train taken out of service) easier and safer.

But a longer, faster, rural journey - possibly passing some smaller stations at express speed - would be much harder for a lone driver to evaluate and respond to.

Wouldn't hall effect sensors work better than micro switches. I know some engineers might say there are too many stray magnetic fields on a train, but I didn't have problems on TBM's or Longwall mining equipment where I found that vibration was problem with mechanical devices., and trains vibrate a lot.

Should I mention that modern passenger train here won't release their brakes until all doors are properly shut?

I cannot speak for modern trains as no experience. I can recall 1976 & being on a late shift one week. At the start of the shift, we had to bring the train out of the depot. Unlike many other trains in service on the other Underground lines where once the Guard's control was removed the heaters shut off. Not on the Metropolitan at that time. Being August 76, that train was too stifling for the crew let alone any passengers. With the heaters on & the doors closed - phew.
As we came out on the "fast road" ran with doors open on both sides. 1st passenger pick up was Finchley Road, nice 5 minute run to try & cool down the train. The looks on the passengers on the stations on the "slow road... :-)

Modern transport has many +'s & -'S. My personal view has always been a minimum of two crew - Driver & Guard. Had several occasions where either I (when I lost the door pilot light) or a passenger pulled the emergency handle. That has stopped & the driver now gets a light on his panel telling a handle has been applied BUT it does not stop the train. :-(

A driver has too much to concentrate on, the main one being the road ahead & signals to concentrate on his dashboard.

My views are based on Underground trains at that time.

Truck carrying load of Axe body spray explodes in Texas
The trailer exploded when the fire reached the trailer and its containers of aerosol deodorant, CNN affiliate KWTX-TV reports. Spray cans were launched in both directions of I-35.
Despite the large explosion that snarled traffic on the interstate for about eight hours, no one was hurt

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/02/us/axe-truck-explosion-texas/index.html

---

"I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear this wasn't fatal. Thoughts out to the driver of the train. Unbelievable."

3 lucky people who had presence of mind & used it

Don't use a foot bridge for a 25 tonne water tanker.




https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-45460829