Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Newkid92 t1_jecbpp4 wrote

Sounds more like tampering with evidence to me.

124

trs21219 t1_jecpkbw wrote

It sounds like NTSB didn't collect the evidence when they had the chance.

>Immediately following the derailment, the locomotives and uninvolved
leading cars were moved from the derailment site to one of our
facilities,” the company wrote. “This movement did not overwrite the
videos. The locomotives were held there for NTSB inspection. Following
release by the NTSB days later, the locomotives were returned to normal
service.

Basically every NVR, Dashcam or Bodycam works like this. It only has X amount of space so it keeps the most recent and overwrites the oldest data once it hits a low amount of free space on the drive. NTSB should have collected that as soon as they had access to the train.

54

goplantagarden t1_jecutm1 wrote

At some point I can't continue to believe this is incompetence. They have money to pay off politicians, so I'm sure they pay the regulators too. I guess it's too much to expect anyone will have charges filed against them for destroying evidence.

46

BureaucraticHotboi t1_jed0g5a wrote

I agree it’s not incompetence but it may be it’s nefarious cousin-underfunded regulators. If their just aren’t enough staff to do the right thing, it serves the same purpose as bribing officials and it’s been the trend In government since Reagan. If you can’t outright get rid of a regulatory body, neuter it by underfunding it and understaffing. That way everything is “working” but is ineffective furthering the public’s doubt in government agencies

9

reverendsteveii t1_jef3h3a wrote

This. You don't bribe regulators, that's dirty and more importantly, people understand that it's dirty. What you do is "donate" to politicians in such a way that they understand that your donation is contingent upon them loosening regulations and hamstringing the regulators. It still has the same effect, your business doesn't have to pay pesky safety costs or lawsuits after you kill a bunch of people, but this way it's all above board legally speaking and you at least have the veneer of being able to tell people that the system is working.

5

Newkid92 t1_jecwzzs wrote

Agree, with any past incidents I'm sure to protect yourself from a company stand point they'd put a policy in place for this exact thing. They are like a corporate mafia, another train derailed somewhere else today.

8

reverendsteveii t1_jef35hw wrote

> too much to expect anyone will have charges filed

some schlub somewhere might take the fall if they can prove that he made some technical mistake somewhere but yeah, the people who collect 100% of the money when the trains run correctly will see 0% of the responsibility when the trains poison a town.

3

Newkid92 t1_jecr83t wrote

Yes, what is also interesting is that they don't have a backup system uploaded to a cloud of some sort. I'm sure as a big company like that they record for a reason i.e. accidents/ lawsuits. I wonder if a look at past lawsuits/reports could prove otherwise, because this definitely isn't the first derailment.

9

trs21219 t1_jecxvvo wrote

Cloud systems aren't really feasible for something like this. It would require uploading over LTE/5G and would eat a metric crap ton of data across their entire fleet as they are running those trains basically 24/7/365.

4

Newkid92 t1_jecynae wrote

I'm not disagreeing with you, i just find it odd. Being that they do know it only records for so long, i wonder if they have an established policy in-house on collecting that since it could be so vital.

3

trs21219 t1_jed1m6j wrote

It sounds like their policy was to flag the footage of the incident (the 15 mins before until 5 mins after). They still have that part.

It seems like NTSB now wants all of it but they could have had it if they had done their job.

Its kind of funny because I was just watching some reruns of the first 48 with my wife the other day and the detectives on that show, no matter the department always go for video first thing from businesses, ring cameras, etc because they know it disappears the longer you wait. Why a federal agency investigating a major ecological disaster didnt do the same is beyond me.

4

chuckie512 t1_jecyskq wrote

You can batch the upload while you're in the rail yard.

But uploading to a cloud makes sense too. With all the diesel in the locomotive, the local storage is at risk during an incident.

3

trs21219 t1_jeczj4o wrote

The local storage can be redundant SSDs inside of a fire proof enclosure like the "black box" airplanes have. From all of the derailments I have seen in the news in the past few years, i don't think I have seed a locomotive being destroyed.

Batch upload at the rail yard would be probably a huge infrastructure project, especially in remote areas with shitty internet. You'd have to place access points all over the yard, run fiber back to a central point, and then have a large amount of bandwidth for a train to upload say 2 days worth of footage from multiple cameras in 1080-4k resolution in under whatever the time it takes them to switch their loads and leave the yard.

But again, none of that matters if NTSB doesn't do their job and actually download the footage when they have the chance. Any cloud / remote backup is going to have a retention window as well where they would delete footage.

2

wagsman t1_jee72gu wrote

Trucking companies do it everyday.

2