Understand that these derailments happen all the time. They just haven't gotten the attention until now. Railroad safety is a huge issue that is not getting any better - it is getting worse. The workers have been trying to shine a light on this potential infrastructure disaster for years. East Palestine was the accident waiting to happen and there will me more. Next time it could be even worse and in a place closer to home for each of us.
Under current regs, they are allowed to pull over 150 cars. Try stopping that mess if needed. Here is a tidbit for you. We were all happy when Trump slashed a crap ton of regs in order to streamline things. The problem was that some of the regs that were cut, had some huge negative consequences. One Obama reg that was axed under Trump was a requirement to place a digital breaking device on all cars to help avoid these multi car derailments. The railroads didn't want to spend the money to update the system, so this particular reg was selectively killed. Another change that combined to create the perfect storm for a Palestine accident was increasing the number of cars that can be pulled, From my understanding, this has been a Biden change. The maximum number of cars that can be pulled increased from around 90 to now around 160. (Not sure of the exact numbers. A railroad anon can correct me on the numbers.)
We must try to bring some attention to these issues over railroad safety. Since we have some leverage on twitter again, now is maybe a good time. #Railroad Safety
Understand that these derailments happen all the time. They just haven't gotten the attention until now. Railroad safety is a huge issue that is not getting any better - it is getting worse. The workers have been trying to shine a light on this potential infrastructure disaster for years. East Palestine was the accident waiting to happen and there will me more. Next time it could be even worse and in a place closer to home for each of us.
Under current regs, they are allowed to pull over 150 cars. Try stopping that mess if needed. Here is a tidbit for you. We were all happy when Trump slashed a crap ton of regs in order to streamline things. The problem was that some of the regs that were cut, had some huge negative consequences. One Obama reg that was axed under Trump was a requirement to place a digital breaking device on all cars to help avoid these multi car derailments. The railroads didn't want to spend the money to update the system, so this particular reg was selectively killed. Another change that combined to create the perfect storm for a Palestine accident was increasing the number of cars that can be pulled, From my understanding, this has been a Biden change. The maximum number of cars that can be pulled increased from around 90 to now around 160. (Not sure of the exact numbers. A railroad anon can correct me on the numbers.)
We must try to bring some attention to these issues over railroad safety. Now that we have some leverage on twitter again, now is maybe a good time. #Railroad Safety