Fri 2 Mar 2012
Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
Posted by anaglyph under Australiana, Idiots, SmashItWithAHammer, Stupidity
[18] Comments
The Minister of Transport
Melbourne,
Victoria
March 2, 2012
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to you this morning in an effort to obtain an answer to a question that has been puzzling me since I moved to Melbourne around five years ago. The house where I live is situated in leafy surroundings near a large park. Mostly it is very quiet here, especially at night. Quietness is a really good thing for sleeping.
There is a railway line across the road from my house. It is not a hugely busy line, but it does have a fair amount of domestic train traffic. I really like the sounds of the passing trains, and even when they start up at 4.30am for the weekday task of ferrying commuters into the city, the rumbling whoosh as they go by does not really bother me, nor interfere with my sleep. The same can be said for the late night trains that run until 1am.
Directly across from my house on the railway tracks is a foot crossing. This crossing has automated closing gates and a warning alarm that sounds a full minute or so before the train reaches the crossing. This system adroitly prevents pedestrians from walking out onto the train tracks when the train is approaching. Indeed, I have observed the system’s effectiveness on many occasions. Typically, people approach the crossing, hear the warning sound and see the gates close. They then stop and wait patiently at the closed gate. To inadvertently continue onto the tracks, they would not only need to be completely deaf, but to also accidentally scale a meter high gate. To my knowledge no-one has so far missed these fairly obvious indications that a train is imminent.
Here is my question, then, Minister: given that there is a very successful method in operation to prevent people from walking into the path of an oncoming train, WHY DO THE FREAKIN’ TRAIN DRIVERS FEEL THE NEED TO BLAST THEIR VERY LOUD HORNS IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE?
In the first place, the sounding of the LOUD horn appears to me to be entirely redundant given the existing safety system. Itinerant nocturnal ramblers are already waiting quite immobile at the closed gates well before the LOUD horn has rent the peaceful silence asunder with its brassy shriek. I could perhaps embrace the concept that the LOUD horn is an ‘extra’ precaution – a better-safe-than-sorry flourish, if you like – were it not for the fact that this ear-frakking aural event usually happens at a point about 8 meters from the crossing. This is so close that it seems to me to be entirely useless for any practical purpose. Here is a diagram to help you visualize the situation, Minister (this is a daytime image, but it may be more instructive if you could imagine it as a nice moonlit night, delicately pointed with the soft chirrup of crickets):
And here is a movie I took this morning of a train approaching the crossing with its closed gates (there were no pedestrians at this time, either at the gate or staggering bewildered across the rails).
If we assume that the train is travelling at a modest 40km per hour ((They probably travel faster than that, in my estimation.)) then by my calculation it covers that 8 meters between the time it blasts its LOUD horn and the pedestrian crossing in something less than a second. Are you familiar with the African cheetah, Minister? The African cheetah is the fastest land animal in existence. It can run at an astonishing 120km per hour at top speed. That’s 3 meters a second. Here’s a picture of a cheetah running:
Minister, if an African cheetah happened to be on the railway tracks in front of my house as a train approached and sounded its LOUD horn a mere 8 meters away, it is doubtful that even it would have a chance of reacting to the event and escaping unscathed.
A human being at peak fitness can run at a top speed of about a third that of a cheetah. I don’t see many human beings of peak fitness in these parts. I think you can probably see what I’m getting at here.
Now, you may be tempted to tell me, dear Minister, that the Blowing of the LOUD Horns is standard operational practice throughout the Melbourne suburban rail system. You might venture to offer the explanation that drivers are instructed, as a general rule, to sound horns at crossings and stations as a commitment to the security of the community, and that they simply reflexively carry out the action unaware that some crossings already have adequate safety precautions installed. And I might be tempted to believe that explanation except for one small thing: the Blowing of the LOUD Horns is completely ad hoc. Sometimes the LOUD horns are sounded, and sometimes they are not. By my reckoning, about 6 in every 10 drivers feel the need to shatter everyone’s eardrums, mostly in the pre-dawn period. Horn blasting would appear, then, to be completely discretionary. ((It’s probably unnecessary to point out that this happens with trains travelling in both directions, but I’ll point it out anyway.))
I understand that you are a busy person, Minister, and must have many issues on your plate, so, in order that I get some idea as to why I must be jarred from my sleep repeatedly through the early hours of the morning by the shriek of MetLink banshees, I have prepared my question with answers in a multiple choice form below. I would appreciate it greatly if you could tick the appropriate box and send your reply back to me at your earliest convenience.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Our suburban train drivers blast their LOUD horns a mere 8 meters from the pedestrian railway crossing because:
□ Isn’t everyone already awake at 4.30am?
□ We spent money on installing horns so we have to justify the expense.
□ What else is there to do when you drive a train?
□ Silence is an abomination.
□ We hate the people who aren’t travelling on trains as much as the people who are.
□ Train drivers have no comprehension of physics and/or acoustics.
□ Train drivers have excellent comprehension of physics and/or acoustics, and are evil.
□ We have shares in sleep clinics.
□ We are attempting to address the Melbourne cheetah problem.
□ We are attempting to address the Melbourne obesity problem.
□ There is no good reason. It’s quite ridiculous and I’ll put a stop to it immediately.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
I look forward to your speedy response,
Yours Sincerely
The Reverend Anaglyph
Church of the Tetherd Cow
Melbourne
□ I don’t care, I have rerouted the railway line away from my own house.
Tsk. A wasted opportunity to reintroduce the Cow Poll.
The Poll doesn’t run properly anymore for some reason. It completely wrecks the sidebar. Something to do with the latest versions of WP.
□ I approved MYKI. My intellectual capacity is obviously in question.
If Mr. Director doesn’t check #7 (At the very least), then you know you’re being lied to.
The only one I want checked is the last one.
I’m gonna go check Morena Baccarin.
She’ll only want to eat your ferret.
While I don’t want to downplay the frustration you feel at being woken up every night, I thought I might inject my perspective as a (former) train driver (in Sydney, though, not Melbourne).
The correct answer, which you’re astonishingly unlikely to actually get from a politician or bureaucrat, is that the train drivers who aren’t blowing their whistle at all are probably breaking the rules, and the ones who sound it just before the crossing are probably breaking the spirit of the rules, if not the letter (I don’t know what the victorian safeworking rules state, but NSW says “whistles must be sounded during approach to level crossings” — no mention of *how far* in advance).
In defence of the whistle:
* It’s much easier to make, train, and enforce a rule stating “sound your whistle at all level crossings” than to choose which crossings to make whistle-free (in the bureaucrat’s mind, possibly being on record as the person who authorised a whistle-free crossing where someone gets cleaned up would be bad for the career).
* There is the possibility that the protection equipment may not have operated properly for some reason, for which there is no indication for the driver.
* People do the *dumbest* things. They *will* climb the gates, wrench them open, or whatever else is required to get them to where they’re going just that little bit faster, consequences be damned.
I firmly believe that there is a segment of the population that has never made the correlation between level crossing warning equipment and the approach of a train. They seem to think that the lights and bells herald *their* glorious approach, and the gates are designed to personally frustrate and impede their ability to go about their critically important business. Therefore, the gates should be circumvented with all possible haste. Only the visual presence of a train has any hope of intruding into their bubble, and the whistle is an attempt to attract their attention. It may make you feel better if you think of it as the driver saying “please don’t randomly jump out in front of me!”.
All that being said, I can certainly empathise with your desires for a whistle-free night’s sleep. I, too, love a full night’s sleep. Certainly, the drivers should be sounding their whistle a lot further from the crossing than they are, which would make life a lot easier on you (although your neighbours may take a more negative view of such a change). There’s also the distinct possibility that it won’t be too much longer before the level crossing whistle blowing is banned — there’s a lot of awareness of noise issues in railway management, and they recently changed the rules about sounding the whistle when departing a platform in Sydney, so the level crossing rules will probably go the same way one day.
Hello and welcome to The Cow, Womble!
I completely understand that all you’ve said is most likely correct, and despite my snarkiness in the post, I did assume that blowing the horn is regulation and that ‘non whistle-blowers’ were breaking the rules (my allusion to its discretionary status is, as I’m sure you realised, for the sake of humour).
I can also understand your point about the authorities feeling the necessity of catering for dumb people but the way I figure it is that no matter what you do, sounding of horns included, you STILL won’t stop idiots from attempting to beat the trains. Or from just being idiots and doing idiot things on the tracks. I’m inclined to think that warning systems shouldn’t be put in place to ameliorate idiocy, but rather to warn normal people that a dangerous situation is imminent. Most normal people respond fairly well to warning systems, it seems to me. When it comes to idiots gambolling on the train lines, well, perhaps this is a case where we should let natural selection do its job.
I know this is probably harsh on the drivers, but hey, they are ultimately helping make the human population smarter, and that’s gotta be a good thing, right?
As for the distance-before-the-horn-is-sounded thing, well, here are my thoughts on that:
Having observed the trains in front of our house for several years, my considered opinion is that for the horn to have any value at all, they’d need to sound it at least thirty seconds prior to where it usually happens. WHICH THEY DO, because thirty seconds back on the track there is a station, and they sound the horn as they leave the station. This is, perhaps, the problem. The driver has just sounded the horn as they leave the station, so they feel they need to do it again somewhere before the crossing. But that ‘somewhere’ is friggin’ useless because it’s just too close. Realistically speaking, there is NO sense at all in sounding the horn in the stretch between the station and the crossing.
I’m sure you’re aware of the practice of railway engineers putting detonators on the tracks in order to warn workers further up the line that a train is coming? Well, typically speaking, the detonators are laid a full minute or more in advance of the train. This is the kind of time you need to inform people that a train is coming, and that they should get off the tracks (and that’s people who are already attuned to the fact that trains are near). Blowing a horn a few seconds before you reach a possible nitwit on the tracks will do NO good whatsoever. If they haven’t seen the actual train by that point, they’re roadkill. Or rail kill, I guess.
Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to participate in the discussion, and I take heart from your final assessment!
The local railways have just launched a “Use your brain, tracks are for trains” campaign, which reminded me of this post, so I thought I’d check in. A few rebuttal points, if I may…
Whilst eradicating the oxygen thieves of this world is a noble goal, I’m afraid it’s hard to apply an IQ test to a smear of blood and hair on a train windscreen, so it’s hard for a driver to take comfort in the idea that they may have been improving the gene pool.
On the subject of detonators (sorry, “audible warning devices” now, thanks to some over-sensitive policy wonk who thinks the word “detonator” is too violent, or something) — anyway, detonators are for the benefit of the train crew, not the track workers. They’re actually *very* rarely used on worksites that trains will be running through. Dets indicate to the crew to slow the hell down (two bangs) or stop immediately (three bangs). They would really be useless for warning track workers — while they do go off with a sizeable pop, the dets get placed 2.5km (two bangs) and 500m (three bangs) before the worksite, and you’re unlikely to hear them over the sound of machinery even if they were a hundred metres away.
Thanks for the clarification on the detonators. I love me my fact-checkers.
As to the driver regrets of mowing down errant crossers, well, I was of course joking. I do have sympathy for drivers who hit people on the tracks, but mostly because those kinds of accidents are suicides. I don’t think anyone should be forced to participate in another person’s death against their will.
I figured you were joking about drivers hitting people, but (a) I just wanted to clarify the point in case someone who *has* been involved in such an incident (I haven’t myself, thank $DEITY, but I’m good friends with people who have) were to come past and think we’re a bunch of terrible human beings for joking about such things, and (b) I couldn’t *not* invoke the mental image of doing an IQ test on a chunk of skull and coming up with a higher score than the original owner would have gotten.
Hmmm…. well played Womble. Ball back in your court reverend.
‘Pok’ (that’s a tennis-ball-hitting-a-racquet sound).
They will instigate a rule that says one quarter mile before…and one quarter mile after, the horn must be blown. One full mile each way at the Rev’s house.
You forgot the ‘Or else’.
For Womble:
IQ Test (scroll to about 55 seconds in).