Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 256, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1916 — HUMAN RISK EVER PRESENT [ARTICLE]

HUMAN RISK EVER PRESENT

Impossible, Entirely to EUmfit|rt4 That Peril in the Operation of Railroads. A correspondent of thq New York Sun sends that journal the following: “Your editorial article entitled ‘Another Rear-End Collision,’ referring to the recent wreck at Milford, Conn., prompts the following on a subject which, to me, has been of absorbing interest for several years past, more especially since the wreck of the Federal' Express on July 12, 1911, which resulted in the killing of 12 persons outright, the Injuring of 100 and large material damage. “The train was in the hands of nn experienced engineer of proved trustworthiness who ignored a signal and took the short crossover at a high rate of speed. The ‘ engineer of the locomotive which caused the Milford wreck —he was killed —was a man of good reputation and high standing as a locomotive engineer, yet he evidently ran by, first a caution signal, and later a ‘home’ or stop signal, without appreciably reducing the speed of his train. “The signal system in use on the New Haven railroad at the present time is beyond question as complete and mechanically perfect as any in this country. In the recent wreck, it was not the signal which failed, but the human response to the signal’s command. Thus many serious wrecks of the past few years have been due, as far as investigation has been able to determine, to the failure of some responsible employee to obey the command of a mechanical signal. In the majority of cases, hud the engineers adhered to the running rules, the wrecks would have been averted, no lives lost and no property damaged.”