No problem. I'm sorry for being so overly defensive in my response.
I don't entirely disagree. However, in an endeavour to stay out of discussing last weekend's unfortunate incident we are instead talking tangentially about the self same issues, which I completely understand as people from outside the industry are trying to understand what might have happened. But it's a bit like discussing the "Scottish play" without making any reference to the "M-word". In some respects I'd prefer not to have this pretence and just be able to talk plainly whilst still respecting the situation.
That aside, I'm amazed that there are still operators out there that rely on a Late Notice Case or printed notices. Where I work we've had tablets for some years (in fact we're now onto our second generation of tablet) with all our notices sent electronically. Even before that, our telephone booking-on system was linked to the printer so that when you booked on it would print your late notices, so you knew that they would be near the top of whatever pile had accumulated up to that point.
I can only speak for myself here, but I find the contents of the various notices I receive sufficient for me to go out and do my job. Where there are any gaps in information it is usually because either no-one has thought to provide it or it forms the answer to a question not yet posed (or still pending an answer), although in most recent experience this is to do primarily with infrastructure changes. Apart from that I'm not sure what other information I would need, apart from the obvious ones of "why am I still sat at this red signal" and "why have you put that slow freight train out in front of me".
For the benefit of those looking in from outside, there are already protocols in place to advise drivers of important things that they might not otherwise know, most of which involve communication through the signaller. New speed restrictions where boards have not yet been erected, cautions for infrastructure issues or trespassers, etc, all come through the GSM-R cab radio. Messages can also be got to the driver from control via platform staff or guard (where there is one). We are far from being uncontactable, even once we're out on the road.
I don't know what else could be done to improve the situation. I know that GSM-R has some neat functions that currently only get rarely used, but I do understand that a text message or berth-triggered broadcast can be extremely distracting if sent at the wrong moment. It might be fine while you're bowling along out in the countryside, but if you're on a busy DOO metro service with stops every two minutes it would be far from ideal.
This for me is the nub of the problem. Technology is great when it adds something, but the desire to have live information in the cab has to be balanced with the driver's existing workload and not in itself cause any additional problems. A signaller can stop the train before speaking to the driver and a guard can pick the right moment to buzz the driver to relay a message, but an automated system will just ping it into the cab whenever it is triggered to do so. And no matter how technically good a system is, having to listen to or read a message and assimilate what it says while driving a train isn't as easy as it sounds. I had a berth-triggered GSM-R broadcast in the bowling-along-in-the-countryside scenario, and I found it worryingly distracting. Heaven only knows how you'd balance that with trying to stop at a station or a red signal, or adjusting speed to match a restriction.
And this brings me to another issue. No matter how good the technology used for delivering it, the message still originates with a Mk1 human. Part of the problem with the GSM-R broadcast message I received was that it was delivered by voice by a regular signaller. Now I mean no offence here to any of my slipper-wearing colleagues (sorry, couldn't resist
), but the message was mumbled in an unfamiliar accent and, because I didn't have any warning of what it might say, I had to pay very close attention to it to make sure that I heard it correctly because I didn't have the option to ask the signaller to repeat it if it was garbled or the line quality was poor. The attention that I was having to direct towards listening to this broadcast and assimilating what it contained was attention that I was not directing towards controlling the train. If I'd had to direct my attention back towards driving (e.g. because of a cautionary signal) I would not have fully understood the content of the message which could potentially cause me to have an incident due to missing whatever vital piece of information I was meant to receive. Quite honestly I hope I never receive another one.
Text messages are likely to be similarly troublesome. When you consider how many times people misunderstand each other on this forum because of the way that we interpret written text (and I'm not looking at anyone when I say that), I'm really not sure that it's a good way to disseminate potentially safety-critical information.
All of this leads me to the conclusion that the system as it stands at the moment strikes the best balance between ensuring that drivers have all the information they need and are updated as necessary while ensuring safety. The desire to have live information in the cab must be balanced with the implications that it creates.
