A Device To Be Designed For Use On
The Front Of a Train Engine To Prevent Injury And Death Due To
Collision
by Laurie J. Goetz
October 9, 2012
Description:
A relatively long projection protruding
from the front of an engine in the direction of travel, which serves
mainly the function as a warning of an impending collision. This
would be a function similar to the old “Cow Catcher” attached to
the front of an engine, which simply keeps the cow from going under
the train and pushes it to one side or the other, while the cow can
still be severely injured or killed by the impact. But this device
is lighter and smaller and may not entirely push something heavy
away, like a car. Rather, it is intended to serve the function of
the train horn/whistle, or the gate that comes down at an
intersection to warn traffic and pedestrians from being on the tracks
in the next minute or so. As an early warning, giving time for the
traffic to move off the tracks.
The projection would be designed to be
relatively easily collapsable upon impact, and made to fly away from
the wheels of the train if it hit something, (rather than go under
the wheels, unless, of course, it was designed to do this to help
stop or slow down the train.) It would also be something that at a
high speed would not be likely to pierce right through a person or
animal, so the leading edge would be rather wide and soft. It could
be like a flag, or collapsable sign.
It could be as long as a block ahead of
the train, with its own support on wheels, kind of like a little
cabboose but in the front.
It could even be like a small car with
a driver, and cameras placed so that it can deploy any safety
measures very quickly. The front would be made entirely of something
that would catch and hold or carry a person. Imagine a stunt man
preparing to jump off of a building, what he puts at the bottom,
would be like what is at the front of this car, and it would also
have a leading edge that carried deployable air-bags or foam. This
would protect the Engineer, as well. And the whole thing would be
attached to a very long connector that would slide under the front of
the rest of the train, while providing resistance to slow the car
down.
Intention:
Our community has had several train
collisions over the last few years, and the last killed an
eleven-year-old boy who was walking to school in the morning,
inattentively walking across the tracks at a gated intersection which
had lights, bells, and signs. The gate went down, preventing cars
from crossing, but did not go down over the sidewalk. The boy was
probably using some music device and wearing a hood over his head.
The community has placed signs on the sidewalk and next to the
sidewalk, but no gate goes down preventing someone from walking
across the sidewalk.
The neighborhood doesn't like the train
horns because there is housing right up to the tracks and so often
trains have been told to be silent, and signs have been posted saying
so, but now they use their horns again. However, the horn was not
enough to prevent a woman from becoming stopped on the tracks while
waiting for the street light to change, since there is a main street
running right along the tracks on one side. She jumped out and a
stranger helped to rescue two children from the back who were
strapped into car seats, but he became injured himself.
It seems as though the problem is that
many people are unaware that a train cannot stop in any comparable
distance to a car or truck, yet a train uses a similar-sounding horn
to a truck, but which is simply louder than other vehicles. However,
the loudness appears the same from farther away, and so it can sound
just like a horn on a truck, from a distance that is still dangerous
and the train cannot always stop within this distance. (The distance
from when a train horn sounds as loud as the average truck horn.)
Education that trains cannot stop
easily would help. Perhaps this could be part of the regular
television programming that discusses seasonal risks, like checking
your dryer vents for clogging, having a working smoke detector, and
slowing down around schools when school starts. Often, television
shows discuss how to prepare for driving in bad weather as seasons
change and this could be part of that kind of discussion.
However, with Ipods and the common use
of earbuds, texting while driving, texting while walking and other
distractions have made a train horn much less noticeable.
So, we have the gate and bells and
signs, we have the train horn, and we have the train driver who can
apply brakes. We could add to this, education of pedestrians and
drivers about the stopping (or lack of) distance of a train. And yet
there are still accidents. We have a busy downtown area, and a park,
a bike trail, and a major street all adjacent to our train track,
which comes right from the major city next to our neighborhood, which
comes from the harbor just east of here, and often the trains are
really loaded down with double-stacked crates of goods and materials.
I live close enough to hear any accidents that occur on the
intersection where the child died. It is across the street from a
busy shopping center, and on several bus lines with people waiting at
bus stops on both sides. So there are many additional distractions
from lots of traffic and people.
There could be a gate that sweeps
across the intersection just before the train arrives, strong enough
to push a person or animal off the tracks, but only where the
sidewalks are. It could be collapsable if it was hit by the train,
so the train would not derail. This could save a life, but a person
might be injured by the gate itself, yet avoid getting entirely run
over by the train.
I think an engineer could design an
extended “bumper” for a train, that would slide under the bottom
of the train and provide just enough resistance to an object the size
of the average person so as to prevent them from dying from the
impact of a moving train. This bumper could also help to engage the
brakes in the case of the driver also being inattentive at the moment
a person were to run onto the tracks. The bumper would be rounded to
tend to push things away from getting under the wheels, but also
would move under the train itself as it hit something, to slow the
impact with the train. This would have its limitations, since if the
train was travelling extremely fast, it would have to be very long
for it to prevent a death, and it would only work for certain
situations. It might only be an advance warning of the train as it
is already trying to slow down.
You could also put this “bumper”
under the train track, and it would go up as the train approaches,
and then fold down between the tracks as it approaches the
intersection. It would move along ahead of the train, slow enough
not to hurt someone too badly, but just fast enough to help prevent a
collision with the train itself going a certain speed. If it was
designed to scoop the person and move them in the same direction as
the train, it could help to match the speed of the train somewhat so
that the eventual impact would be lessened by the speed of the bumper
with the person on it.
The idea in both these cases is to make
the speed of the two objects less different, so the impact would be
lessened. It could not promise to save every life, but only to
provide an additional warning of a fast-moving vehicle that cannot
stop at the intersection. It might help some people from going under
the train wheels, which would lead to much more severe injuries, such
as amputation, and cause more problems than if the person were swept
aside, however abruptly. And of course, the person might also
encounter a vehicle at the road as well, but most likely those
vehicles will be stopped at the gate and waiting for the train to
pass.
The material used to make this device
could be a collapsable metal like aluminum, built like a highway
bumper, with lots of honeycombs that would easily squish, or bendable
plastic filled with some other collabsable material like foam,
sawdust or springs. It could also take the shape of a parachute or
canvass that would fold easily and only open up when a sensor
indicated an oncoming object. A parachute could also deploy at the
end of the train if it was traveling fast enough at the moment
braking is required. There could be more elaborate devices that
would deploy like foam used on airplane runways, or an air-bag, and
these would be installed both on the front of the train, and at the
intersections.
The other place a buffer could be put
is between the engines, if there are several pulling the train, and
between at least several of the first train cars. If there were
collision compressing compartments between each of these, any impact
would be lessened, for the safety of the train and any passengers in
the case of a derailment, or oncoming train, or other unforeseen
event leading to an impact. This might not help a pedestrian but may
help reduce the total collision force in the case of a large truck or
van or other large object being on the tracks. Reducing the
collision force would help to protect the cargo, and this would be
very important if the cargo were flammable materials. The collision
compressing compartments would need to be activated by a sensor, like
an air-bag, since the normal connection between the cars would have
to be considered, and allowed to compensate, by having the coupling
slide under the car for a short distance instead of holding stiff.
These functions would all make the train longer, but safer. If the
space between each car, and the space in front of and in back of the
train were all considered to be safety zones, and designed to
collapse and to employ a safety device like foam, then any train
wreck would be less costly, cause less damage, and be more
repairable.
An additional benefit of any safety
measure is that it makes the train company look better in an
accident, since that is when a lot of public attention is drawn to
the train, how it functions and how things can go wrong, and a lot of
news media are filming the train, and discussing these issues. Being
proactive about safety, rather than reactive, can be good publicity
and can help to reduce insurance costs. Also, any lives saved helps
the engineers deal better with the fact that many times accidents
cannot be prevented totally, and the engineers require counseling to
deal with the trauma of watching helplessly as someone is killed. If
the train itself is adapted to at least do something to minimize a
potentially devastating accident, this can help with that, and
possibly reduce the cost of having an Engineer need extended time off
or other medical care.
As a society, we have put so much money
into the science of the military to cause injury, and prevent injury
to soldiers and police, yet we have done little with our money to
fund research to prevent injury of other kinds that occur during
peace time. Injury of all kinds puts stress on families, communities
and society, and this pressure can add to all the other pressures
that lead to the angry forces of war. Why not study these kinds of
things and make them be part of re-deploying military science and
capability that has so much organization and ability? Then whether
it is war-time, or peace-time, the jobs are more secure and help to
stabilize the military families, and forces, and there won't be any
incentive to continually look for conflict in order to deploy capable
people to doing patriotic things for our country.
In addition, any knowledge of how to
prevent injury in peace-time can also help prevent injury in
war-time. War requires supplies by train and preventing losses due
to train accidents helps at this time too.
To offset the cost of the research into
the fesability of such a thing, I recommend that plans be sent to The
MythBusters, and give them support with train employees and
designers, and also old trains and parts so they could really do a
great show on it. Then the data could help further any promising
findings later on.
Or a contest could be made with a
substantial prize, (like a grant or science scholarship to the
winner's children, or for themselves). This has worked for other
science-based initiatives, because many scientists are hobbyists and
will work on problems just for the fun of it, but need an incentive
to get started on a project. Offer the prize, an award and some kind
of recognition, and also some materials and a place to work, such as
unused tracks, and disabled train engines.
A good competition could be a military
group of scientists competing against a peace-time group, or some
other group that might be like a special-interest group that runs
model trains (their contribution could be small-scale workups of the
ideas.) Perhaps a group that designs roller-coasters and amusement
rides would also be interested, for example.
An additional goal could be ways to
help a train to stop more quickly at certain critical intersections.
This might be something like truck tires attached to the sides of the
train tracks that would automatically engage about a block from the
intersection using sensors at the interesction to decide when to
deploy. The tires would have their own disc brakes and would press
against the train equally on both sides to slow the train down. The
train cars might have to be designed to have some kind of continuous
surface on which the tires could press. This might not prevent an
accident, but just reduce its level of damage/harm.
