Now, it was readily apparent that that the train went too fast for the curve, but at that point, nobody - not the Mayor, not the Fire Department, not EMS, not the NTSB, NOBODY - knew why the train was going too fast.
It’s not unusual for public officials to talk about something s/he knows nothing about. Hell, it’s inevitable. Don’t we expect public officials to know all and see all? When a public official says, “Beats me,” they disappoint us. Even if it truly does beat them.
When a human does anything, the intent counts roughly as much as the effect - maybe more. Let’s take homicide. At the end, you have a dead person every time. (“Hom,” person; “Cide,” kill.) A homicide may be justifiable, although opinions do differ about what is justifiable - Self-defense; Execution; Abortion. (Give me a break - I know that lots of people disagree with the last two. Can we get away from politics for a moment and talk about practical ideas?)
A homicide can be excusable. Oops, what a huge mistake. That’s hard to determine. You do have a dead victim, they should not have died, and people talk about getting justice for the victim, even though no earthly power will get them justice.
A homicide can be criminal. A one-punch fatal bar fight (I have a case in mine from a few years ago) is criminal. A homicide “in the heat of passion” earns extra punishment. A criminal or depraved homicide earns the maximum punishment we are willing to give. Usually. [Here, I’m thinking of another case where a lawyer found an inherent weakness in the investigation which necessitated a favorable (to the defendant) plea bargain. Sorry, you’ll find nobody, including me, who will give any details.]
But you have the same dead victim. Intent counts. The Mayor had zero idea what the engineer intended.
Four years later, the NTSB has issued a report. That’s about the standard time for a report to generate. It takes time to deconstruct and reconstruct an accident. We want the experts to tell us WHY so we can avoid a repetition. (Remember the Ford Pinto, the Chevy trucks which caught fire, the Comet aircraft, the 737 Max, and endless other examples?)
The NTSB blamed the engineer.
Not so fast there - The Mayor was right only by accident. He still didn’t know what happened. Even a blind squirrel gets a nut now and then. (That’s my favorite saying of Bill Clinton.) (Lighten up - You don’t have to approve of everything someone does to quote them. I like Bill Clinton.)
And not so fast there - That was only the first conclusion of the NTSB.
The engineer was set up to fail. He did not have adequate training. That’s hard for non-train people to understand. The train runs on tracks. All you have to do is work the accelerator and the brake, right? Put me in a train cabin, and you’ll be safe. I’ll believe that right up to when the train derails. I bet 10% of airline passengers think that if the pilots are disabled, they can land the plane. They will believe that right up until the crash.
Did the corporate culture of the train company doom the passengers? No, that’s a cop-out. A corporation has a legal existence. But a corporation does not know the love of God, cannot hear a baby’s cry, and cannot form a thought. Only people can. People formed the intent or the omission to train engineers. Nobody planned the wreck - But their decisions made it more probable. (See the next perfectly reasonable, persuasive and refreshing post on politics for more on the intentions of people.)
The responsibility lies with LOTS of people. It lies with bureaucrats; Congress; and with railroad lobbyists. They told a convincing story - that they no doubt believed - that the passive equipment which would have slowed the trained absent an input by the engineer was too expensive and wouldn’t be necessary.
Do you remember the Chrysler Corporation about safety 20 or 30 years ago? Safety had become cool then. Big engines and hot cars were in a temporary decline. But years before, the Chairman of Chrysler visited then-President Nixon complaining about the possibility of requiring airbags in autos. Too costly; they won’t work. It turned out that they DO work and have saved many lives. But they were bad for the bottom line.
The news of the NTSB train report was buried. No media is likely to trumpet these multiple failures. Everybody has forgotten about the train wreck, except the NTSB and the people who were affected. That’s understandable - A lot of bad things happen and if you remember bad things from last year, you are unusual.
My message? Hmmm. I’ve taken my time about getting to it.
We make a mistake if we make decisions about what has happened with inadequate information unnecessarily. If you are presented with something that requires immediate response, you have to do the best you can with the information you have. That’s not the case with an accident which has already happened. There is a “rush to judgment” in our American culture. There is an artificial urgency to find out what happened and affix blame.
Is the NTSB the final word on the train wreck? Well, it’s authoritative, but not the sole and only opinion. The NTSB doesn’t really exist, either. Only the people there do, and people MAY be wrong. There might be additional information which clarifies the cause, so we cannot close our minds.
I too need to remind myself to keep an open mind. That applies to almost everything we encounter.
Mizpah!
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