According to a report by the US “Newsweek” on the 8th, after the “poisonous train” derailment accident occurred in Ohio, the safety of railway workers has become the focus of public opinion. Some railway workers complained that the railway company shortened the time for train safety inspections in order to improve efficiency, which brought hidden dangers to the lives of workers.
For years, U.S. railroad unions and workers have been warning that accidents like “poison trains” derailing in the United States will happen sooner or later. They believe that the “precision dispatch rail” (PSR) model adopted by many railroad companies will bring additional safety risks to workers. . Christensen, a first-class freight conductor and co-chairman of the United Railway Workers Union, said that since the railway company started using this model, jobs have been cut in many fields, including conductors, engineers, track maintenance personnel, signalmen and so on.
The “precision dispatch rail” model has been widely adopted by the US rail industry to improve efficiency and reduce costs, but it also increases risk. Christensen said that under the commercial strategy, the length of trains has been increasing, and the time and resources of workers to conduct safety inspections of trains have been compressed, which is shorter and less frequent. “It used to take 4 to 7 minutes per train to check correctly, but now it can only take 1.5 minutes or less. Therefore, railway workers like me are exposed to a lot of safety problems.” He believes that in order to ensure The safety of employees, the federal government must intervene additionally to prevent railway companies from exploiting regulatory loopholes to bypass supervision.
Norfolk Southern, the operator of the train involved, has been under scrutiny since a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio on the evening of February 3, causing serious pollution. Since December 2021, Norfolk Southern has been involved in five major accidents, three of which have killed company employees. (Yang Jia from Overseas Network)