Ten90 Solutions LLC

Just a word:

Like me, maybe during the turmoil and drama of the past 15 months, your focus wandered. 

Maybe, like me, you were distracted by the absence of communication, contact, conversation that left a big hole where your awareness of detail used to be. 

Maybe, like me, you became a little bit depressed by...well, any number of things and that interfered with you mental acuity. 

Or maybe, like me, you thought you might have actually "aged out" of this business. 

Maybe that's the case, and maybe not. 

In any case, none of that matters.  Meaning?  Meaning over the past 15 months I received notices of individual switching accidents that have claimed seven (7) lives. 

Seven. Unlucky seven.   Seven individual notices that failed to register as more than statistically random events.   

I have very little information on the circumstances of the incidents other than the occurrence of all seven in yard, or industrial switching operations at low speeds. 

Being a once and forever terminal rat, I've always  thought that slow speed operations have specific risks that can break through the operating safeguards we install against accidents. 

Slow speeds might lull the crews into exercising less vigilance, when in fact greater vigilance is required due to the (usually) higher density of traffic, frequency of movement, and lack of "automatic" safety features.

Slow speed accidents (usually) involve less damage that might indicate that something is structurally, or deeply, amiss in the operation. 

Slow speed produces an opposite impulse to "hurry up," to get in or get out quickly.

Everybody wants to do everything as quickly as possible in slow speed operations, because there's so much more to do slowly.

Whatever the reasons, causes seven (at least) are dead.  Maybe you think, like I do, that seven is seven too many for an industry where accidents are failures. 

David Schanoes

June 25, 2021