• Question: What has been the most challenging accident that you have had to solve?

    Asked by sdavis to Drew on 14 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by mughals1.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi Sdavis. That’s an interesting question. Most of my work isn’t investigating accidents, it’s trying to stop new ones. I have been involved in a couple of investigations though. One of them was a train that was supposed to be stopped by a red light, but it wasn’t. The light outside was red, but the computer inside the locomotive was telling the driver to go at full speed. Fortunately no one was hurt.

      It turned out to be a subtle problem with exactly where a sensor was put between the locomotive and the rails. The more interesting question for me was why did we miss that problem when were designing the system? Were there other similar issues we might have missed?

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