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By Pinternihyeee
#3734
Trains are an achievement of transportation economics of scale. Why not implement safety devices in it as well?

Everyone knows what total wrecks colliding trains become. The focus of blame and/or responsibility to avoid this catastrophe, has solely been on concise scheduling and line coordination of the railways network. Why not boost the odds in favour of less catastrophic results and concern for accidents/mishaps occuring?

Here's how :

Pass an international law AND create a "railcar/caboose" to ALWAYS be placed at the end of a train AND immediately after the locomotive(s), with the sole purpose of ABSORBING or at least CUSHIONING the forces of impact! I have roughly designed such a railcar using impact absorbing technologies already available in the public domain. All it needs is further verification/testing towards specific design and technologies. Sounds right? Tell me!

Reward: Pilot Project deployed in Indonesia. Device named in my honour. That's fine!
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By Steve
#3780
Great idea! ;-D To know if this will easily become reality one would probably have to crunch some numbers - that is, what this would cost, how many people get killed in train accidents per year and how many lives can be saved. Even though we hate to admit it, human lives always have a price tag on them (varies from country to country), and that basically determines if a government is willing to implement something like that.
By zyx Rationalist
#3805
There is no need of having train accidents because we dont need them, here is why of it :

Place a very very small train in fornt of all trains at a distance such that train from full speed will come to hault since breaks were applied. When the little one ahead dashes into something, the train behind would be on breaks automatically and there will be no collision.
By asbestosfriend
#6207
Just a quick thought,

But instead of using other train cars or having a cusion, why not have each train equiped with a sender and receiving transmitter that when the trains come too close to each other, the brakes are automatically applied. It wouldnt take very much room, and very low power consumption, and could easily be retrofitted into every train no matter the design or age.

;)
By llemmart
#9852
in the us they got computers that tells where any train is. but some still run together all because a sinple thing that wasnt checked, the switch that puts the train on another track
By Rishi
#9866
Steve wrote:Great idea! ;-D To know if this will easily become reality one would probably have to crunch some numbers - that is, what this would cost, how many people get killed in train accidents per year and how many lives can be saved. Even though we hate to admit it, human lives always have a price tag on them (varies from country to country), and that basically determines if a government is willing to implement something like that.
In India the price is about USD 2000. Accidents are fairly common. Much work is going on including a form of RADAR early warning system and shut down. The problem is the curves. Line-of-sight devices tend to misread signals.

The idea of a tiny pilot that goes ahead of the train and collides harmlessly and in dying send a warning to the two colliding trains can be a solution if a proper robot pilot can be designed.

May be GPS can give adequate warning. What has to be remembered is that even when full brakes are applied it may need more than a mile of track for two trains in full speed to come to a halt without colliding. The pilot has to be a mile head of the train.

rishi
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