(The Associated Press circulated the following story by Tara Godvin on September 21.)
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific plans to attach digital cameras and microphones on its locomotives to record each trip and any accident that might happen along the way.
“There’s always a lot of debate in court between what the crew said and what the plaintiffs claim. And we feel this will help clarify the situation as nearly as we can recreate it,” said company spokesman John Bromley.
A New York Times article published in July said the company failed to properly report fatal accidents along its tracks.
Immediately after the article was printed, Union Pacific said it would develop a camera system, Bromley said.
The Omaha-based company is now in the process of finding a company to install the cameras and is working out details such as cost and how precisely the system would work.
The cameras would be mounted outside the engineer’s cab and provide an engineer’s-eye view of the tracks. They would be used along with the event recorders, already on the company’s locomotives, that track the actions of the engineer much like a black box on an airplane.
“This would put a visual and sound with the recording,” Bromley said.
The use of video cameras to monitor activity along the tracks in front of trains is increasing among the nation’s railroad companies, said Tom White, spokesman for the American Railroad Association.
Norfolk Southern already has video camera’s installed on its trains; Burlington Northern Santa Fe has recently announced similar plans; and other companies have also been considering video cameras, White said.
The video provides more documentation of accidents and can provide valuable evidence if the company is sued, White said.
Norfolk Southern has had video cameras installed on its locomotives since 1999 and has been able to use the video to successfully challenge lawsuits, said company spokeswoman Susan Terpay.
The company currently has 850 locomotives equipped with cameras and expects to increase that number to 1,070, or a third of the company fleet, by the end of 2004, Terpay said.
Though the system is a serious investment for Union Pacific, its ability to increase clarity in the courtroom should help it pay for itself, Bromley said.
The first phase of the project, which the company plans to complete by the end of 2005, would focus on installing the cameras on the 6,700 locomotives that cross over roads as they pull trains between cities, Bromley said.
Though the cameras could prove positive for engineers targeted by lawsuits, video monitoring the tracks has raised concerns among some employees that the next step could be monitoring workers, said John Bentley, spokesman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
But Bromley said Union Pacific is only interested in what’s ahead of the train and whether workers have sounded the train’s horn.
“I guess basically we think it makes good business sense or we wouldn’t do it,” he said.