Mother of Monrail Pilot files Civil Suit

[googilycub]

"Proper equipment" being the key words. I'm willing to bet the guy at Perkins had no more than a radio, which I would not consider the complete arsenal of "proper equipment" needed to clear a train for a reverse move through a supposedly thrown switch.

.

For what was being done, I would consider only a radio proper equipment.

 

[DMC-12]

As has been said many times, being on or off site had nothing to do with happend.

K.

I like to think otherwise though.. as its rather obvious at this point. Seeing what has happened and all... you know.

Cause I am sure if he was on site... he would of seen both monorails.. and Austin would still be alive. I am pretty sure of that at least. Just sayin :shrug:

 

[googilycub]

K.

I like to think otherwise though.. as its rather obvious at this point. Seeing what has happened and all... you know.

Cause I am sure if he was on site... he would of seen both monorails.. and Austin would still be alive. I am pretty sure of that at least. Just sayin :shrug:

:brick::brick:You can think what you want, and no its not rather obvious. As someone who does this stuff for a living, being on site has no bearing on what happend. The manager was told that the switch thrown, end of story. One has to be able to trust what is being told to you by people who are doing the job. As a railroad dispatcher who works in suburban Chicago, I controll rail movement in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. I as much father away from much of what I am doing than the local Denny's. I do not have to SEE every switch, every signal, every interlocking, I go by what is being told to me by train crews. The same thing applies here.

 

[DMC-12]

:brick::brick:You can think what you want, and no its not rather obvious. As someone who does this stuff for a living, being on site has no bearing on what happend. The manager was told that the switch thrown, end of story. One has to be able to trust what is being told to you by people who are doing the job. As a railroad dispatcher who works in suburban Chicago, I controll rail movement in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. I as much father away from much of what I am doing than the local Denny's. I do not have to SEE every switch, every signal, every interlocking, I go by what is being told to me by train crews. The same thing applies here.

Oooo do you control the Metra trains? They are pretty awful and always late.
Also... can you do something about the 5 mile long trains that block all the crossings in the Western Suburbs for hours on end.

 

[googilycub]

Oooo do you control the Metra trains? They are pretty awful and always late.
Also... can you do something about the 5 mile long trains that block all the crossings in the Western Suburbs for hours on end.

Nope and Nope. When blocked by a train just remember, in most cases the rails were there before the burbs.:wave:

 

[s8film40]

Blaming the manager in this situation is about the same as saying someone who fell from a building died because the ground was too hard. Yes the manager being in the tower would have given him the opportunity to correct the problem, but the simple fact is he did his job accurately and correctly. The only reason he is being blamed is because it sounds more dramatic because he was at Perkins, if he were in an office at the TTC it wouldn't sound nearly as sensational. The initiating factor was the shop person giving the incorrect information it was his responsibility to do his job correctly and verify the switch had been moved no one else's. The driver of Pink was instructed to move his train through the switch and onto the spur. He has admitted to "flying blind" at no time is a monorail pilot supposed to drive their train without knowing where they are and which way they are going. The monorail pilots are given very specific instructions including landmarks and identifiers that they are responsible for watching for, they don't just tell them start backing up and stop when you get to a certain point. The root of this problem doesn't lie in procedures but in hiring and training practices. Trying to run a transit system with $7.00/hour employees was an accident waiting to happen.

 

[Space Mountain]

Why didn't anyone hit an E-STOP or their remote kill switch? That's the question I want answered and I think everyone has overlooked this. There is no need to blame the manager when a simple button can save lives if used.

 

[peachykeen]

K.

I like to think otherwise though.. as its rather obvious at this point. Seeing what has happened and all... you know.

Cause I am sure if he was on site... he would of seen both monorails.. and Austin would still be alive. I am pretty sure of that at least. Just sayin :shrug:

Think of it this way; imagine if the Shop worker was off site instead and threw the switch remotely. Everyone would now be saying "If he had been on property where he was "supposed" to be, Austin would still be alive." etc etc.

Well, the Shop person WAS where he was "supposed" to be, and he STILL didn't see that the switch was in fact not thrown. At the time of the accident there were NO cameras in Central and no way for Central to know the switch had been properly moved other than the word of the Shop operator, who DID have all of that information at the time.

You can say until you're blue in the face that "Had the manager been there, this wouldn't have happened." but you don't know that.

Keep in mind that there were also 3 cast members standing on the platform with the ability to see Pink reversing back towards Purple AND had the ability to hit a button to kill power, but none of them noticed until it was too late.

This was a horrible accident, with many mistakes involved. But you cannot single out the manager as being the key player. I don't get why people think that, had he been up there, this wouldn't have happened, because you had the Shop operator in his designated spot with all the switch info right in front of him and he missed seeing that he didn't move one of the switches.

As someone else above me said, the mere fact that the manager was at a non-Disney restaurant as opposed to someone else on property other than the tower, now makes him the easiest target for people to blame, when he was doing what had been done (and allowed!) for years previous.

 

[Bluewaves]

If the operator was in the control tower he would have been able to see on the status board that the switch wasn't thrown, plain and simple, the control tower could have been at the north pole but if it was manned they would have seen that the switch wasn't thrown and what sections of track were and were not energized and so on.

Its not that the manager was at a Denny's, its a matter of a culture where no one assumed that they needed to monitor the status board to make sure everything was happening the right way.

No one should be controlling a switching operation without seeing the status of the switches and double checking that everyone else is doing what they are supposed to.

 

[s8film40]

If the operator was in the control tower he would have been able to see on the status board that the switch wasn't thrown, plain and simple,

You mean just like the operator at the shop was able to see on his control board that the switch was not moved.

The problem is the duty and responsibility of moving the switch is solely that of the shop person. Even if the person controlling the monorail were in the tower they would have taken the word of the person in the shop, yes they might have questioned it and caught his mistake assuming they looked at it, but ultimately that panel is just a convenience and sometimes doesn't always work and they will always ultimately rely on the word of the person actually responsible for moving the switch.

The problem is everyone seems to want to focus the blame on the person who didn't catch the mistake and not the people who actually made the mistakes to begin with.

 

[peachykeen]

You mean just like the operator at the shop was able to see on his control board that the switch was not moved.

The problem is the duty and responsibility of moving the switch is solely that of the shop person. Even if the person controlling the monorail were in the tower they would have taken the word of the person in the shop, yes they might have questioned it and caught his mistake assuming they looked at it, but ultimately that panel is just a convenience and sometimes doesn't always work and they will always ultimately rely on the word of the person actually responsible for moving the switch.

The problem is everyone seems to want to focus the blame on the person who didn't catch the mistake and not the people who actually made the mistakes to begin with.

Exactly. The manager was a key player that night, but all the fault does not rest solely on him like the news articles try to imply. The bottom line is the manager was not in the control booth, but HE WASN'T REQUIRED TO BE at that time. You can't punish a guy for breaking a rule that never exsisted.

 

[googilycub]

No one should be controlling a switching operation without seeing the status of the switches and double checking that everyone else is doing what they are supposed to.

You just shut down half of the railroad operations in the US. What should be done is that no train should be shoved blind. If a freight train needs to back up, the conductor rides on the side of the last car, no matter if it is the middle of a thunderstorm or below zero and snowing. With cabs on either end of a Monorail, there is no excuse for not having someone on the point.

 

[s8film40]

You just shut down half of the railroad operations in the US. What should be done is that no train should be shoved blind. If a freight train needs to back up, the conductor rides on the side of the last car, no matter if it is the middle of a thunderstorm or below zero and snowing. With cabs on either end of a Monorail, there is no excuse for not having someone on the point.

Well even if the driver was at the other end he still had mirrors and visual references if he wasn't paying attention from one end who's to say he would have from the other.

 

[Tom]

Well even if the driver was at the other end he still had mirrors and visual references if he wasn't paying attention from one end who's to say he would have from the other.

When it's pitch black outside and your windows are fogged up because of the humidity and you're backing up around a curve after having been given the "all clear" by your superiors to override MAPO and reverse all the way to the MK (or garage) - it's obvious why being in the other end would have made ALL the difference.

Ok, so maybe we've all been given extremely wrong information about the "manager at Perkins" over the last year, but I would also be quick to defend the Pink pilot, although many others like to blame him.

I've never been a monorail pilot, but having ridden in the front many times and having ridden on that stretch of track many times and having a tiny bit of logical thinking ability, I can honestly say that the Purple pilot is being wrongfully thrown under the bus almost more so than the off-site manager.

As others have implied, it REALLY comes down to a series of terribly written SOPs.

Yes, all parties involved still share some blame, like the guy who never really threw the switch but said he did, and the CMs on the platform who weren't carrying their kill switches, and the manager for authorizing the move without having someone actually in the control tower, and the Pink pilot for not knowing he was on the wrong track. But the REAL fault lies in policy.

It should not have been SOP to override the one and only fail-safe system to make a "routine" move. The MAPO anti-collision system would have prevented this accident, but it was policy to override the system for mile-long journeys while driving backwards blindly.

It should not have been SOP to allow an empty control tower for even one second while a switching or MAPO-override was taking place. Dinner break, going home sick - no exceptions.

Everyone on a platform should have a kill switch. Someone should have been required to have a visual on switches before authorizing a move. At least with "real" train systems, there are trackside visual indicators (both with lights and the old fashioned red/green signs) that let you know which way a switch is aimed. WDW doesn't even have that, but it wouldn't have done any good since Pink might as well have been driving with his eyes closed (which is essentially what the situation mimicked).

There is a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking, and I'm positive Disney has remedied every item I mentioned above. But no amount of new policy can account for human error - which is ultimately what caused the accident.

 

[Monorail Lime]

Why didn't anyone hit an E-STOP or their remote kill switch? That's the question I want answered and I think everyone has overlooked this. There is no need to blame the manager when a simple button can save lives if used.

Several cast members could have averted the accident but none were aware of the situation until it was too late. The driver of Pink should have noticed that his train was on the wrong track as soon as it was clear of the first switchbeam. Whoever was on the platform should have noticed that Pink was passing by on the wrong track.

Unfortunately the cast members still on duty at 2AM were exhausted due to under-staffing and the late holiday closing. Inattentiveness due to exhaustion lead to poor situational awareness and mistakes.

 

[s8film40]

When it's pitch black outside and your windows are fogged up because of the humidity and you're backing up around a curve after having been given the "all clear" by your superiors to override MAPO and reverse all the way to the MK (or garage) - it's obvious why being in the other end would have made ALL the difference.

Ok, so maybe we've all been given extremely wrong information about the "manager at Perkins" over the last year, but I would also be quick to defend the Purple pilot, although many others like to blame him.

I've never been a monorail pilot, but having ridden in the front many times and having ridden on that stretch of track many times and having a tiny bit of logical thinking ability, I can honestly say that the Purple pilot is being wrongfully thrown under the bus almost more so than the off-site manager.

As others have implied, it REALLY comes down to a series of terribly written SOPs.

Yes, all parties involved still share some blame, like the guy who never really threw the switch but said he did, and the CMs on the platform who weren't carrying their kill switches, and the manager for authorizing the move without having someone actually in the control tower, and the Purple pilot for not knowing he was on the wrong track. But the REAl fault lies in policy.

It should not have been SOP to override the one and only fail-safe system to make a "routine" move. The MAPO anti-collision system would have prevented this accident, but it was policy to override the system for mile-long journeys while driving backwards blindly.

It should not have been SOP to allow an empty control tower for even one second while a switching or MAPO-override was taking place. Dinner break, going home sick - no exceptions.

Everyone on a platform should have a kill switch. Someone should have been required to have a visual on switches before authorizing a move. At least with "real" train systems, there are trackside visual indicators (both with lights and the old fashioned red/green signs) that let you know which way a switch is aimed. WDW doesn't even have that, but it wouldn't have done any good since Purple might as well have been driving with his eyes closed (which is essentially what the situation mimicked).

There is a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking, and I'm positive Disney has remedied every item I mentioned above. But no amount of new policy can account for human error - which is ultimately what caused the accident.

I think you have a very weak understanding of the way monorails operate and the circumstances of the accident. I am assuming that when your referring to the driver of Purple you meant the driver of Pink. Anyway displacing the blame back to the SOP is merely a way for Disney take the easiest route out of this situation. They can admit that the SOP was bad change it and say everything is OK now. The truth of the matter is that any SOP ever written isn't going to be perfect there will always be some situation that comes up that no one ever thought of. It's at this point were quality employee's come into play. Just because the pilot of Pink was driving in reverse and the windows were foggy is no excuse, he's still responsible for driving his train the mirrors don't fog since there on the outside, and in a worst case scenario you don't just move a train with no visibility you stop and radio in the situation, I would think that this would be the policy for any rail or transit system.

 

[fosse76]

Six Flags has/had their own share of serious issues, including the deaths of 8 teens trapped in a burning Haunted Castle. Great Adventure in particular has had many serious accidents (some deadly), the park was at fault for nearly every one.

That accident was caused by a guest. Six Flags was responsible because there were no visible fire exits and poor lighting. A guest lit a match (or lighter) because he couldn't see, and something caught fire as a result.
And Six Flags, as a whole, has nearly 1000 rides in its arsenal, so the probability of accidents is theoretically higher than for those of the Disney Parks. I think part of the problem is human error. A large percentage of Disney rides are entirely at the control of an employee, which substantially increases the risk of accidents. Other than railroad trains and the antique car-style rides, I can't think of any Six Flags park where a person has control of the ride.

 

[Tigger1988]

That accident was caused by a guest. Six Flags was responsible because there were no visible fire exits and poor lighting. A guest lit a match (or lighter) because he couldn't see, and something caught fire as a result.

There were also no sprinklers and the building (which was just trailers linked together) had never been inspected for safety. Many things could have saved those teens, all of which were overlooked by Six Flags, was my point.

 

[ErickainPA]

That accident was caused by a guest. Six Flags was responsible because there were no visible fire exits and poor lighting. A guest lit a match (or lighter) because he couldn't see, and something caught fire as a result.
And Six Flags, as a whole, has nearly 1000 rides in its arsenal, so the probability of accidents is theoretically higher than for those of the Disney Parks. I think part of the problem is human error. A large percentage of Disney rides are entirely at the control of an employee, which substantially increases the risk of accidents. Other than railroad trains and the antique car-style rides, I can't think of any Six Flags park where a person has control of the ride.

I remember that fire, my brother was still working there at the time. It was a lighter and since the whole Haunted Castle was just semi trailers (mostly just a little wood and aluminum) foam rubber, fabric and plastic, it easily caught fire and spread trapping those kids. As you said Six Flags didn't have the fire exits marked. Hard to believe that was 26 yrs ago already.

 

[mcjaco]

:brick::brick:You can think what you want, and no its not rather obvious. As someone who does this stuff for a living, being on site has no bearing on what happend. The manager was told that the switch thrown, end of story. One has to be able to trust what is being told to you by people who are doing the job. As a railroad dispatcher who works in suburban Chicago, I controll rail movement in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. I as much father away from much of what I am doing than the local Denny's. I do not have to SEE every switch, every signal, every interlocking, I go by what is being told to me by train crews. The same thing applies here.

This is pretty much the way the entired railroad universe is operated, nowadays. Nothing new. A radio, and pencil and paper are all that are really needed.