Going to appeal, but was the bridge marked "no trespassing?"

>The lawsuit claimed the train engineer saw the three boys 34 seconds before the impact, yet never braked until after Whiddon was struck

No sense going into emergency at T-34 seconds if the boys have jumped to the clear by T-16 seconds.

>The suit also contended the train was going 15 mph faster than federal guidelines because a safety device at the rear of the train was not operational.

FREDs govern train speed?

>>132132

>FREDs govern train speed?

I prefer the term EOT, but yes.

No EOT means you're a 30 mph train. Not supposed to depart an initial terminal on any train with more than 4,000 trailing tons without one. You cannot report clear of track authorities without visually seeing the last car in the train, or a qualified employee giving you a roll-by and stating that they see your marker light, flag, or non-operational EOT on the rear.

But back to the other part of your post, almost no engineer will put the train in emergency unless they hit something or are about to run through a switch, over a derail, into cars or engine, or past a signal displaying stop indication. A lot of these new road motors will instantly alert the RTC/dispatcher that the train was placed in emergency and they'll come on the radio asking you why did such. You're going to sound like a jackass when you say "we thought we were going to hit some kid on the tracks, but we didn't"

Corny is right that there will be an appeal, and that CSX will either pay nothing, or simply settle out of court. I'm leaning towards the latter even though I don't agree with it. The train wasn't really speeding if the EOT was temporarily out. That happens a lot when you're in hilly territory.

The comment section is very interesting one of the jurors actually comments on the page that they made the decision because the engineer took no action before hitting the boy.

If the bell was on or he activated the horn then he took action.

>>132139
That is correct.

It is sensible to take braking action when a collision is imminent, but as we saw, several of the kids were able to get to safety. Another issue is that people don't realize what constitutes proper train handling. It's not as simple as just putting your foot on the brake. For proper dynamic braking(which is the preferred method of braking) you're supposed to notch down once every 3 seconds until you're in idle, then go to setup in the dynamics for 5 or 10 seconds (I can't recall. I'm not an engineer and my rule book is in the car.) then start using the dynamics. Assuming he's in notch 4, that's at least 17 seconds before he's actually braking the train.

That's an awful big commitment to make when someone could just get out of the way. Emergency braking is something that is HIGHLY discouraged as it creates large amounts of in train forces and track stress.

>>132137
Are they allowed to do that? Down my way, if you went on a news site and commented on what happened in the jury room they'd stick you in the cells for a couple of weeks.

>>132141
You can comment afterwards, but you're supposed to isolate yourself from all outside information on the trial while it's taking place.

>>132140

They need to take jurors to simulators set up like the accident happened and show them that even if he did "take action" it wouldn't have helped.

Good job on the 2012 article.