For Amtrak Engineer Brandon Bostian, Childhood Passion Became a Career

[xynthee]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/us/amtrak-derailment-philadelphia-engineer-brandon-bostian.html

What the hell happened??!! He seems like a great guy who was obsessed with safety. This is really bothering me.

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But friends say Mr. Bostian, 32, who lives in Forest Hills, Queens, was an analytically minded man whose love for the rails they believe was matched only by his concern for safety.

“I talked to him the night of the accident after it had happened,” said Mr. Weir, who reached Mr. Bostian in a Philadelphia emergency room, where he had one leg immobilized, stitches in the other and a concussion. “There is not a person in the world who feels as bad about this as Brandon.”

In posts on the website Trainorders.com — where train enthusiasts and employees congregate — a writer who used the handle bwb6df and signed many of his posts as “Brandon Bostian” routinely chided railroad companies for not doing more to prevent accidents, saying in one post that he found the specter of human error “frightening.”

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[TwilightGardener]

1. May have been as simple as, he got confused as to where in the

trip he was, and/or wasn't watching the speed. I feel bad for the crash victims, but unless something really reckless or sinister comes out, I feel bad for this guy too.

[stevenleser]

2. Agreed. What is particularly maddening is that there are safety features that would have eliminated

the chance for human error or bad human decisions here, and it is actually law that they were supposed to be implemented.

[TheCowsCameHome]

3. "Stuff" happens, unfortunately.

Being a railroad buff/enthusiast doesn't translate into being a perfect employee by any means. In fact, sometimes the hard-core buffs that hire out are actually worse at what they do. The employee at the throttle of Amtrak train 66 that piled into an MBTA commuter train in Back Bay station, Boston at high speed in 1990 and causing massive damage and injuries was the biggest railroad buff you'll ever see - he ate, slept, and lived for the railroad. Word was he "got lost" and literally didn't know where he was in the last seconds before the crash.

It only takes a few seconds of inattention or distraction to have a disaster on your doorstep. I really feel bad for this guy in the Philly wreck. It could have been any fellow engineer on the Amtrak roster. There's a saying around the railroad that goes "You're only as good as your last trip".

It will be interesting to see what the NTSB determines when their investigation is complete.

[xynthee]

4. But he's been pretty vocal about safety

and worried about human error causing accidents (assuming he wrote this):

From the same article:

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The bwb6df posts criticized a lack of safeguards to protect against human error, pointing out how fatigue, bad communication and “cutting corners” could lead to accidents. When others voiced skepticism of new safety technology, or dismissed the idea that an experienced engineer could make a simple mistake, the writer was often quick to comment to the contrary. The writer also said, “I wish the railroads had been more proactive in adopting” safety technology.