(The following story by Katharine Q. Seelye appeared on the New York Times website on March 4, 2009.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Railroad union officials being questioned about last year’s deadly commuter-rail crash in California told a federal panel this morning that they objected to having surveillance cameras facing inside the cab to monitor engineers and other crew members inside locomotives.
The officials said they could accept outward-facing cameras — which, for example, would monitor the track — but that inward-facing cameras could violate the privacy of crew members. Instead, they suggested having a second person in the cab.
Metrolink, the California commuter agency involved in the crash, plans to install inward-facing cameras as a way to try to prevent behavior that led to the accident, like the engineer’s use of his cell phone.
The officials spoke during the second day of hearings of the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, which is airing the hearings live in a Web cast.
The engineer involved in the crash, which killed 25 people (including him) and injured more than 130 in Chatsworth, Calif., in September, had allowed rail buffs to operate his train on past runs and was planning to let another operate the train that day, according to documents presented Tuesday at the hearing. He also sent or received 43 text messages on the day of the crash, including one 22 seconds before the head-on collision of his commuter train with a Union Pacific freight train, and used his cell phone. He also ran through a red signal light. “We don’t support any recording or video devices in a cab,” said William Walpert, national secretary treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. He said cameras would be “overly intrusive.”
J. R. Cumby, of the United Transportation Union, which represents train, bus and mass transit workers, said cameras would also be expensive to install and would require training someone to monitor them. He would prefer a “second pair of eyes” in the cab, he said, although his union would not object to inward-facing cameras “once the proper safeguards for privacy are in place.”
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.
Panel members grilled the two about what actions the unions had taken since the crash to improve safety. The union officials said they had updated their Web sites with relevant information and discussed the issues at regional meetings. But asked if they had taken any action to improve compliance with safety rules, Mr. Cumby said, “Not to my knowledge, and no one has asked that we go and make some sort of request of our membership, but if one is desired by our safety board, we can surely put one up on our Web site.”
Kathryn O’Leary Higgins, chairman of the inquiry board, was puzzled when the union officials said that a “second pair of eyes” would help solve the problem. There isn’t always “safety in numbers,” she said.
She noted that random drug testing had helped reduce drug abuse, and she wondered if random testing of cell-phone use might help.
“There’s not a 100-percent fix for this,” Mr. Cumby replied. “Human beings are going to not comply with things from time to time. That’s the nature of all of us.”
He and Mr. Walpert said educating employees would be most effective, especially training them in how to “call out” a co-worker if he or she were violating the rules.
There was much discussion at the hearing, which began Tuesday, about the use of technologies to monitor and record events inside the locomotives, the way airplanes are equipped with data and voice recorders. Mr. Walpert said he opposed voice recorders for the same reason he opposed cameras, as a violation of privacy.
Later, in questioning members of the California Public Utilities Commission, Ms. Higgins tried to clarify which state and federal agencies and which rail entities had jurisdiction and enforcement authority over the kinds of issues that had emerged in this case. The state utility officials said they would write a “white paper” delineating their authority and how they had been pre-empted in certain cases by other agencies.
By this point, Ms. Higgins, who repeatedly noted that 25 people had been killed, seemed not just surprised but slightly exasperated. Clear lines of authority are important, she said, not just for untangling the problems in California but for preventing future accidents.
“The stimulus package invests a lot more money nationwide in high-speed rail and other transit, which, I submit, is a good thing,” she said. “But that raises questions about implementation and management issues and what we can do to look ahead and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The hearing recessed for lunch and is to resume this afternoon.