Originally Posted By SpokkerJones By the way, as the man who shot the video was making his way out of the station he could have still legally shot the scene of the accident.
Originally Posted By hopemax >Why would Central clear a train into an occupied station? Inattention, most likely. As I said, I'd heard that Central was not at the console at the time of the accident. IMO, if this is the case, it's the root cause of the accident and whoever was Central should be strung up. < The info on Mouseplanet's blog, http://mousepad.mouseplanet.com/blog.php?b=459 , theorizes that Pink was supposed to be switching tracks to head back to the barn for the night. The driver of Pink would have thought he was backing up into the empty Express Monorail station, which is where he would have ended up after a successful track switch, but instead backed up into the occupied Epcot station.
Originally Posted By tiggertoo They need to install rear cams. They cannot expect CM to get a good view of their surroundings via mirrors or to act on faith. I have a Class A license, as know how difficult it can be to navigate in reverse via mirrors. A train would certainly be much worse. There are too many things that could go wrong--as demonstrated.
Originally Posted By sharpc My thoughts and prayers are with the family of both monorail drivers, as both will be dealing with for the rest of their life.. What joe80x86 says makes sense. My only lingering question regards why the driver of monorail purple was still in the cab if he was sitting in the station.. He had to have been waiting to take the family to a destination, which makes me wonder why MPink was even worried about getting in the station.. Hopefully the facts will come to light, and we will learn of the circumstances leading up to this tragic event.
Originally Posted By sharpc I also disagree with the portrayal of the actions of the cast member as 'shady'. Asking someone to turn the camera off is not only the logical thing to do, but also the respectful thing to do.
Originally Posted By joe80x86 @sharpc The current thought on micechat is that purple had just pulled into the station a few seconds before being impacted. Which might also lend that the driver was standing getting ready to exit the cabin, this of course would cut his reaction time as he would have to move back to his seat to see the control panel.
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones There's two separate debates here, the moral one and the legal one. In my view the accident is a newsworthy event and people, including myself, want to see what happened. Disney has been criticized in the past in the way it handles accidents at its parks and allowing the filming of the aftermath provides more transparency. I don't believe it was disrespectful to film the aftermath. Legally, the man who shot the video did nothing wrong. It was legal to start shooting video. When asked to leave he complied. When asked to leave it was legal to keep filming. Any footage he got is legal to distribute.
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 That cast member had no right to tell the guy to turn off the camera. He was in no way obstructing the rescue operation and was documentating the incident. Is this disney's attempt to cover up or something?? << Oh please, Disney owns that property, they can ask the media to turn off their camera.. Why does everything have to be a coverup or Disney must be doing something wrong?
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones "Oh please, Disney owns that property, they can ask the media to turn off their camera" I'm probably getting too technical here, but there is a distinction between the photography and trespassing. Disney, or anyone, can ask you to shut off your camera and you can choose to comply or not. If you don't turn off the camera you are doing nothing illegal. It's when they ask you to leave and you don't. That's when a crime is being committed. That's why people turn the camera off, so they are not asked to leave. "Why does everything have to be a coverup or Disney must be doing something wrong?" Disney can certainly improve its image by allowing the scene of the accident to be filmed. And the cast member had his priorities out of whack by becoming concerned with the filming guest when the number one priority was the attempted rescue attempt of the driver, which in hindsight, we know was impossible.
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 Disney can certainly improve its image by allowing the scene of the accident to be filmed. And the cast member had his priorities out of whack by becoming concerned with the filming guest when the number one priority was the attempted rescue attempt of the driver, which in hindsight, we know was impossible.<< In today's lawsuit filled environment, they really have no choice but to not allow scenes like that to be filmed... BTW, I am sure there were more than 1 CMs at the scene, my guess is that others were helping while some were put on crowd control...
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones CNN has a poll up. "Do you worry about your safety when visiting theme parks? Yes 38% 17304 No 62% 27722 Total Votes: 45026 " Hah. The most dangerous thing the average person does is drive a car, and they do that every day. I feel much safer on trains (including the monorail variety) than in any car.
Originally Posted By The Duck We have to remember that this happened at about 2:00am on a very busy holiday. On top of everything else, the CM was probably exhausted when the accident occured.
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer What a horrible day for WDW...My deepesr condolences to the CM and his familly. Is there any official word or at least a guess on when service will return to the Monorails?
Originally Posted By Mr X ***The fact is that at times technology fails, and maintenance has nothing to do with it. The recent Metro accident in DC that killed 9 people should have been prevented by safety systems in place but was not.*** I think this is a total copout. The Japanese bullet trains have been crisscrossing the country at 200 miles per hour for nearly 50 years without one fatality. Tens of millions of passengers, and not a SINGLE death. In one of the most earthquake prone countries to boot. So I just don't buy that. Technology doesn't just "somehow" (shrug shoulders) fail. It's either outdated, poorly maintained, or SOMETHING.
Originally Posted By Mr X Or lacks proper redundancy, I should have added. Certainly COMPONENTS can fail (and if that was more what you were driving at, I apologize), but that's why you have backups etc... I don't want to get TOO into this, but honestly the system isn't what it could be...having to rely in part on 21 year old kids may be part of the problem (a completely automated system is not only feasible, but IN USE at Tokyo Disneyland). I knew a young guy who was a monorail driver and got canned for sleeping in the cockpit. Just sayin.
Originally Posted By leobloom But what would America be without happily accepting and making excuses for mediocrity?
Originally Posted By -em Sigh- It was so sad seeing the empty and quiet beams today The more info I hear and the more pictures I see it makes sense what prob happened and from what I can deduce is a lot of things went wrong... The part I've heard about Pink backing into the station makes sense for why the rails are the way they currently are, where the fault came from, as for awhile it bothered me as I knew the order they were running last night and purple was running behind pink (with Coral being the 3rd) which didn't explain the series of events then... It doesn't explain WHY Purple was there and WHY didn't people know where Purple was (or if purple wasn't where it was supposed to be) and why no one noticed either audibly via Radio or visually that there was a problem... -em
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones "But what would America be without happily accepting and making excuses for mediocrity?" 38 years without a fatal accident, and what accidents have happened you can count on one finger, and you want to call that mediocrity? Any transportation system would be proud to have that record.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QBZ_S7iAHU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...Z_S7iAHU</a> Interesting explanation at the above link. Makes sense based on the circumstantial evidence, though there could always be more to it than meets the eye.
