Sleepy Train Engineers...

[nicky9499]

It is mildly amusing at first, despite the grave apparent danger such actions may cause.

A posted comment brings up a good question; "if planes can have autopilot, why not trains?" There is some merit to this suggestion. An aircraft, after all, has no less than 6 degrees of freedom (pitch, yaw, roll, and XYZ) while a train has....just one.

 

[clam1952]

Commercial Airlines not only have an auto pilot they have a second pilot as well.

 

[Engineerkenny]

if I were a tourist and I were to go for a vacation to Argentina should I be afraid to ride the trains there if I knew that a engineer was doing this?

 

[nicky9499]

Well, the surveillance cameras were a recent installation as management wanted to find out why there were so many accidents. I'm pretty sure that bloke up there won't be driving your train on your next trip to Argentina.

 

[wkwood]

Commercial Airlines not only have an auto pilot they have a second pilot as well.

That doesn't help all the time..

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/distracted-northwest-pilots-licenses-revoked/story?id=8923849

This was the two dopes on the flight deck playing with their laptops. They didn't acknowledge ATC and it was thought to be a terrorist attack and overshot their destination
by 150 miles.