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I see that yesterday's Long Island RR crash that injured more than 100 was human error. Yet another engineer said, he didn't recall anything about the crash until it was over. That's what happened on the Hudson line and Hoboken crash. Everyone seems to be falling asleep to fast for the deadman apparatus, however that works now days? There seems to be more of this now then before 1975 when the RR crew hours of service law was 15:59. Of course most train's had a fireman on the headend back in the day.
A lot of guys don't manage their sleep. I had trouble staying awake on the night job for a while. We used to get held out of a CSX yard about every night for 2-3 hours. I would sleep on the engine during that time. It messed me up. I learned to black out my bedroom windows and stay up when we got held out. I would bring magazines or a book and read. Once I did that my sleep cycle evened out and it was a lot better. I'm not saying that's what this was, just giving an example. Studies have shown that tired engineers hit the deadmans switch faster than wide awake engineers too.
Sauce I haven't worked as an engineer in 35 years but I do remember when freights ran 15:59 and you had to sleep on the engine when possible because you only had 8 hours home to shop, eat and sleep. This was the main reason I left the railroad. I knew I had at least 15 more years of this kind of life before I could hold a good passenger job.
