Argumentative Essay On Railroad Safety

Following the Civil War, railroads started popping up everywhere. This led to an increase in railroad accidents. This was especially true for brakemen, who coupled and uncoupled the trains, as well as operating the manual handbrake. Uncoupling and coupling the train cars was incredibly dangerous with the “link and pin” system for coupling. Hand brakes were also incredibly dangerous to operate. A myriad of brakemen operating on railroads died. By 1880, railroad worker death rates were second only to coal miners. Many states had safety laws in place, but that meant that interstate railroads had limited safety. So Congress created the Railroad Safety Appliance Act. The original act was called “An Act to Promote the Safety of Employees and
One of these inventions is PTC. It stands for Positive Train Control. PTC, Created by Jeff Young and his team, is a GPS-based technology used to prevent train-to-train collisions, over speed derailments, unauthorized incursion into work zones and train movement through switches left in the wrong position (Switches that are left in the wrong position will cause a train to deviate onto the wrong track. When this happens, a train runs the risk of colliding with another train or even derailing since it is going at a speed that is inconsistent with the unexpected course the train deviates
Approximately 440,000 field assets (i.e. mileposts, curves, grade crossings, switches, signals, etc.) will have to be precisely geo-mapped for PTC to work correctly. This is to create an accurate map of the tracks for the BOS. Also, PTC will not help prevent accidents caused by track equipment failure, improper vehicular movement through a grade crossing, trespassing on railroad tracks, and some types of train operator error. PTC must also be omnipresent to work with all trains on the track. PTC has to be implemented into train tracks very conscientiously, otherwise, it would not function as