Commentary on the Railroad Union

For anyone not current on this story, click here.  The short of it is that last September, a commuter train failed to stop at a red signal, causing it to crash, and killing 25 people (including the engineer) and injuring another 130.  It turns out that the engineer responsible for the crash had sent a text 22 seconds before the accident.

Now Metrolink - the operator of the crashed train - plans to install inward facing cameras in train cabs to monitor the engineer.  This seemed to me like a very reasonable and positive step towards improving rail safety, and specifically towards remedying this specific type of problem.  While I don't know how prevalent this inattentive behavior is amongst engineers, I also don't really care.  It happened, and we are a reactionary society.

However, the Railroad union objects to these cameras, claiming it will violate their privacy.  Instead, they suggest, there should just be a second person in the cab.  They say they don't object to outward facing cameras monitoring the track.  Yet that does not speak to the problem at hand - the track wasn't too distracted to do its job correctly.  They also argue that the cameras would "be expensive to install and would require training someone to monitor them."  Yet no effort was made (that I'm aware of) to prove that this would be more expensive than adding a second salaried worker to every train cab.  And it seems probable that one person would be capable of monitoring more that one train engineer.

I am afraid that I have to vehemently disagree with these assertions and suggestions.  First of all, I don't believe that train engineers have an expectation of privacy in the performance of their jobs.  Yes - maybe they are traditionally alone in the cab.  But then adding a second person would be just as bad.  And that is not the only flaw with the "second person" suggestion.  I cannot believe that any railroad would find it economically feasible to agree to this.  Basically the union is telling the railroads that they need to have two engineers in the cab, just in case one of them is busy attending to his social network. 

Here is the line that I simply cannot believe: 

The union officials said cameras would not deter accidents because crew members would be doing their jobs regardless of whether they were being watched. They did say they would accept cameras if they were used strictly to investigate accidents, but not as monitoring devices.

Can they be serious?  Are the union officials really willing to assert that this particular engineer was doing his job?  Because I think I can safely say that he was not doing his job, nor was he being watched.  So I am incredibly puzzled by their logic on this.  The cameras WOULD deter accidents exactly because crew memebers WOULD be doing their jobs because they WOULD know that they were being watched.  I hope that the National Transportation Safety Board doesn't buy into this nonsense.

What do you think?  I would especially like to hear from anyone who supports the union's position here.