Not just South London but transport safety overall.

Whilst I would prefer to wait for the RAIB (who I have the greatest respect for) to make a statement.

Remember the tram system is "light rail" and was designed to be more like "busses on rails" There are very few signals none at all on the "off road sections" as trams are driven like busses, i.e line of sight and you can often see trams running one behind another at stops with only bus like distance between.

There are signals at some junctions to show the way the points are set, and signals where the tram has to cross a road. These consist of a horizontal line made up of 5 white led's for stop, which changes to a vertical line when the tram can proceed. The signals are obviously linked into the road traffic signals.

I do not believe the system was ever designed to deal with the sort of junction that exists at Sandilands. The 50 mph to 12 mph change seems to be too severe and perhaps the preceding section needs a lower limit.

There are reports of over speed here before.

As I said I wait with interest for the RAIB report and recommendations.

There are signals at some junctions to show the way the points are set, and signals where the tram has to cross a road. These consist of a horizontal line made up of 5 white led's for stop, which changes to a vertical line when the tram can proceed. The signals are obviously linked into the road traffic signals.

Bernie is correct about the led displays, but I am not sure they are linked into the road traffic signals. Every tram I ever went on yhey vigorously rang bells at every road crossing. but possibly for the pedestrians.

I can't begin to imagine the huge sum for a lawsuit if the signal displayed green/go for cross traffic and safe to pass for the tram at the same time. Of course it is linked.

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There are signals at some junctions to show the way the points are set, and signals where the tram has to cross a road. These consist of a horizontal line made up of 5 white led's for stop, which changes to a vertical line when the tram can proceed. The signals are obviously linked into the road traffic signals.

Bernie is correct about the led displays, but I am not sure they are linked into the road traffic signals. Every tram I ever went on yhey vigorously rang bells at every road crossing. but possibly for the pedestrians.

I can't begin to imagine the huge sum for a lawsuit if the signal displayed green/go for cross traffic and safe to pass for the tram at the same time. Of course it is linked.

The 'white bar' or 'white dot' tram signals are part of the uniform traffic signal specification throughout the United Kingdom - see p31 of know your traffic signs (PDF). I've seen them in Manchester and Edinburgh: we don't have trams in Bradford any more, but the same signage is used on our dedicated guided busways. And yes, they are very definitely integrated into the urban traffic control signals for motor vehicles, cycles, and pedestrians.

Anyone wishing to read the RAIB report go

HERE

http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2016/11/16/oklahoma-speeder-caught-at-208-mph.html

An Oklahoma man was arrested on Saturday after leading police on a 208 mph chase.

Nineteen-year-old Hector Fraire first tripped a radar gun doing 84 mph on the Kilpatrick Turnpike in Oklahoma City, before speeding away as police tried to pull him over.

According to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, Fraire’s heavily modified 2011 Ford Mustang was then clocked doing 176 mph and 208 mph, and he tried to elude the chase vehicle by turning off his headlights and brake lights.

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Trawling through youtube and saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH-uwNsyzf0

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Old enough to know better(but)still young enough not to care

Saw this on a site that puts up finds of the month. not linking to there as this has to be family friendly. but it's on YouTube as well.
Don't Forget Your Parking Brake

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-38041755

The death toll following the derailment of a train in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state has reached at least 115, with more than 150 injured, police say.

Fourteen carriages of the Indore-Patna Express derailed just after 03:00 local time on Sunday (21:30 GMT Saturday) near the city of Kanpur.

Rescuers are still trying to reach the injured and recover the dead from the twisted carriages.

The cause of the crash near the village of Pukhrayan is not yet known.

However, the Times of India quoted sources as saying a fracture in the track could have been to blame.

The death toll has been rising steadily all day and is expected to increase further.

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Sadly India does not have a brilliant safety record on their railways.

Guardian

Not surprising.



Aside from the excessive overcrowding on certain trains (no, not all are like the one above), the infrastructure on many lines hasn't been improved upon since colonial days. Just lots of patch-up jobs.
And unfortunately even on the newest of lines the Quality Control during construction & operational maintenance is often seriously lacking.

EDIT- And as for people staying on the platform, keeping off of the rails? If only...

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Grant
Darwin NT

Fuel exhaustion
http://abc7.com/news/pilot-told-colombian-controllers-plane-had-no-fuel-before-crash/1632726/

"'We ran out of fuel. The airplane turned off,'" Sanchez told Arquimedes Mejia, who helped pull the flight attendant from the wreckage.

Human failure.

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Probably not the best way to get a good bargain on a Mercedes.

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EDIT CORRECTED POSTING:
Tesla Model S driver walks away from crash with a truck at ‘tremendous speed’

Earlier this week, the fact that the Tesla Model S broke the machine used to test the roof structure of cars during a round of tests by US regulators came up again on social media despite having happened over 3 years ago. Coincidentally, a Model S owner put the roof to the test today in an unfortunate real world scenario when he crashed into a truck on the Autobahn in Germany.

The Model S lodged itself under the truck and despite the severity of the impact, the driver reportedly was able to get himself out of the car and walk to safety – though his injuries were described as “serious,” but not critical.

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What an Idiot.
Driver live-streams 104 mph crash

A driver live-streamed himself speeding and weaving in and out of traffic before crashing into a garbage truck in Rhode Island.
Source: CNN

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The day the music died.

The plane crash has yet to be fully explained.
It was pilot error.

We are fully and totally devastated by the loss.
Just not possible to believe./
This was back in 50 miles or so right in my back yard.
I have heard of the arifield.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Vertical integration - all too often in recent years Network Fail have worked on their maintenance plan in total isolation, only informing the operating companies as late as they are allowed to do. Meanwhile the operating companies have been developing their timetables and publicity not knowing what Network Fail are thinking. Then there's a big row when the two sets of schedules emerge into the daylight.
Under this new way of working both will have to talk to each other, the biggest impact will not be on the day-today maintenance but on the larger upgrades that the operators want, so they can improve their operations......

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

The managements attention is drawn away from value to the customer and future maintenance, and towards dividends for the shareholders.

Here the power company was corporatised quite a few years ago, then they (the government) decided to split off the sales portion from the network portion. All for the good of the consumer. Being a government corporation, the government (all of them over the years) have used the income from Power & Water as general revenue. All the money that they made & put aside for future works was considered "unnecessary & excessive" & "gave a poor return on investment" & could be put to much better use- by the government.
So Power did what they could to keep the government (shareholder) happy, and the easiest way to improve the financial returns is to reduce staffing levels & un-necessary maintenance. The end result?
Power outages are more frequent & last for longer. It's estimated it will cost $500 million to do all the maintenance & repairs (and replacement of things that if they had been maintained wouldn't need replacing), so of course power bills will have to go up, a lot, each year.

There was a explosion & fire in a substation a few years back; the result of the enquiry was that if the equipment had been maintained as per it's schedule the explosion wouldn't have occurred. Although almost 50 years old, if maintained as per it's guidelines it would have had another 25 or more years in it. Unfortunately Power didn't have the necessary staff to do such major maintenance as they were made redundant years before as being an unnecessary expense. Even if the equipment had just been checked (as per the maintenance schedule) the issue would have been detected earlier & the transformer switched out.
But maintenance costs, and that really impacts the bottom line. Of course if things go down in a screaming heap (or up in flames) 1, 2, 5 years after the goose who made the decisions to shelve such un-necessary work has moved on elsewhere, and the replacements didn't see fit to re-instate it, then how could any of them be held responsible?

Do I sound just a bit bitter & twisted? Hell yeah.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Anyone with one ounce of common sense

Government = common sense
Thanks for the best belly laugh I've had this decade.

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In the case of Network Fail it is not just those elected into Government, but those that employed in government that led to the current situation. Indeed I would lay much of the blame for those employed telling those elected what to do, so the employed have less work and little responsibility for their actions, particularly their inaction as demonstrated by lack of communication to other parties....

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Fortunately this did not happen to Caltrans or to any transportation related government function.

It did. The Toll Roads.

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