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TTC: Russell Hill Crash 20 Years Later

AlvinofDiaspar said:
It's ridiculous that no criminal charges were ever laid.

AoD
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It's ridiculous that no criminal charges seem to never laid for motorists making right turns at red lights and not stopping.

The subway is a "railway". There should have been charges under a federal Railway Safety Act, since it occured on a railway and not a motorway.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
It's ridiculous that no criminal charges were ever laid.

AoD
Click to expand...

The culture of rot started at the top with Al "everything was fine when I was there" Leach, who was the TTC GM from 1988 to just before this happened and fobbed the blame onto David Gunn. The whole organization was coasting on a great reputation and winning safety awards year after year in the 1980s. Nobody really paid much attention to the infrastructure and assumed that the system was infallible. The operator was trained under that assumption. The confluence of misfortune compounded it, the reflection of the headlights making the operator think a signal was illuminated, the extreme heat contributing to a signal malfunction which stopped the train ahead - if not for these things, the problem with the trip arms may not have been detected. There was blame to go around all over the place - who should have been charged other than the operator?
 
One of the comments in the article:

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AlbertHWagstaff said:
The culture of rot started at the top with Al "everything was fine when I was there" Leach, who was the TTC GM from 1988 to just before this happened and fobbed the blame onto David Gunn. The whole organization was coasting on a great reputation and winning safety awards year after year in the 1980s. Nobody really paid much attention to the infrastructure and assumed that the system was infallible. The operator was trained under that assumption. The confluence of misfortune compounded it, the reflection of the headlights making the operator think a signal was illuminated, the extreme heat contributing to a signal malfunction which stopped the train ahead - if not for these things, the problem with the trip arms may not have been detected. There was blame to go around all over the place - who should have been charged other than the operator?
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Though what the operator did was clearly poor safety, from what I understand, nothing the operator did that day was out of the ordinary.
 
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TheTigerMaster said:
Though what the operator did was clearly poor safety, fro what I understand, nothing the operator did that day was out of the ordinary.
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That's the thing, he thought he saw the white signal illuminated and continued on the assumption that the next signal would clear, except that there was a train sitting right around the bend. The faulty trip arm should have stopped his train, but didn't. Probably no one ever thought the reflection of the headlights could be mistaken for an illuminated signal, but an obviously inexperienced operator did.
 
Poor safety remains the policy for the TTC to this day - look at the buses and streetcars that routinely run red lights. When they hit someone, Andy Byford comes out and cries crocodile tears, but he never makes his staff change the way they drive.
 
AndreaPalladio said:
Poor safety remains the policy for the TTC to this day - look at the buses and streetcars that routinely run red lights.
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So the bus and streetcar drivers don't run red lights and then the idiots in the cars and trucks complain how they could have made the light. To run the light or not to run the light.
 
Juan_Lennon416 said:
So the bus and streetcar drivers don't run red lights and then the idiots in the cars and trucks complain how they could have made the light. To run the light or not to run the light.
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Because automobile drivers never run red lights. They just carry them over to other means of travel.
 
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