Dispatcher is a part of the security system. If what you write was the case, then this was still the security system failing and it seems like because of a design flaw. How can one person just authorize full speed in such situation? Why would it even be possible to run the trains at the full speed with protection devices not working?
There was a bad close-call in Finland, where a train drove over a 80 km/h switch at 160 km/h because the driver had forgotten to turn on the train protection device and was expecting to read the speed limit on its screen. The train’s other side actually fully lifted off the rail, but luckily landed back on it instead of the train rolling over. At that point they changed it so that in order to drive full speed without the train protection, the driver has to go through some extra hoops first. There can be situations where that is a useful feature, but it should be made much more difficult than it’s now.
But, as it stands, in almost any train protection system it is assumed that when the system is off-line, railway workers are competent enough to keep things rolling anyway.
Dispatcher is a part of the security system. If what you write was the case, then this was still the security system failing and it seems like because of a design flaw. How can one person just authorize full speed in such situation? Why would it even be possible to run the trains at the full speed with protection devices not working?
But I’ll wait for some proper report…
There was a bad close-call in Finland, where a train drove over a 80 km/h switch at 160 km/h because the driver had forgotten to turn on the train protection device and was expecting to read the speed limit on its screen. The train’s other side actually fully lifted off the rail, but luckily landed back on it instead of the train rolling over. At that point they changed it so that in order to drive full speed without the train protection, the driver has to go through some extra hoops first. There can be situations where that is a useful feature, but it should be made much more difficult than it’s now.
But, as it stands, in almost any train protection system it is assumed that when the system is off-line, railway workers are competent enough to keep things rolling anyway.
The train protection system in question is a German one, BTW. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienzugbeeinflussung