Nicholas Godfrey Period 8: Amtrak Train Crash

Summary: This morning, an Amtrak passenger train collided with a back hoe that was laying on the tracks and ended up killing two construction workers that were at the tracks. Several others were severely injured that were on the train. One passenger that was on the train in the second car back said it just felt like a really scary version of when a roller coaster stopped suddenly. Nobody is sure why the train didn't stop if it knew that there might be workers coming up and why the workers didn't get out of the way if they saw that a train was coming. Riders of Amtrak say that unfortunately this event won't be able to stop them from riding because they rely on Amtrak so much for work. Amtrak is now going to put in place even more measures to try and make sure that something like this won't happen again.

Analysis: I find it very odd that nobody noticed that the train was coming up on this construction zone and didn't try to warn the conductor or why the construction workers didn't start running when they saw the train coming. This is a sad thing and it amazes me that just a back hoe on the tracks caused all of this damage and destruction. This reminded me of the Triangle Shirt Factory incident. The workers were locked into the room to ensure that they would work hard and then weren't let out when a fire started in the building. After the fire, many new changes were put in place nationwide to ensure that an incident like that wouldn't happen again, which is what I hope the result of this crash will end up putting in place.

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/03/us/philadelphia-amtrak-derailment/index.html