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QUESTION:I heard news that a remote control engine on NZ Rail ran out of control
and killed a couple of people.If this is true I would like to extend my condolences to anyone involved.
ANSWER: I have been out of the NZ for 3 months and so can neither confirm nor deny. However I
have looked back through official railway incident reports, which cover accidents upto
about a year ago, and in the only one involving a remote control engine the official
verdict was that it might have been more serious if the engine had been driven
conventionally. (The shunting engine ran into a forklift)
Reading through the reports on the one or two serious shunting accidents every year, my
impression is that often they would not have happened if the driver had had better
visibility. I suspect that the remote units make shunting safer because the person in
control can be where the action is.
New technology can have its problems, but we should not emphasise them more than the
problems of the old technology.
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