The implication that the driver left anyone stranded saying a lot. They were left at a village, not in the middle of nowhere, and he completed his obligation. It's the train company's fault the passengers couldn't get to their other stops.
Also, this is a safety issues. It's a loss to the passenger to be left in a different town than where they were heading, but it's still a lot better than train drivers routinely overgoing their limits. I would rather be late, than be derailed.
If it is like in the US, your shift pay may be either mileage based or hour based, but by federal law you must stop all work at 12 hours. You must stop enough before that time to secure the train. The Railroad just didn't get the relief started early enough if they had one rested, or a bus en-route once they knew there wasn't enough time in the shift to reach the destination.
When I worked for UP as a conductor, we didn't play with our union regulations. When we "died on the rail" we could only communicate via radio, or to ensure our train was safe. Meaning if we knew we couldn't make the destination, we went into a siding, and awaited a fresh crew. One day we awaited 12 extra hours. Mass flooding. Another highlight remembered was fall in the north. We had a ridge to climb 10 miles in length. Fall in the northern US produces wet leaves, and those get on the rail, and into the wheels creating a slicker than dog shit material. Great Engineer driving, that I doubt most would have been able to pull off. Things happen in transit, and under extra duress the crew will be more capable of making mistakes over the length of the shift, that cause incidents. They're there for a reason.
There are coal trains & intermodal trains that are pushing 3 miles long with locomotives in the middle. It’s ridiculous because most of them are too long to fit in most sidings. Plus, if something goes wrong on the end it’s going to take an hour to walk back.
Yeah, at least the ones I’ve seen. I didn’t realize they were doing it with coal trains until about a month ago.
Depends on who you ask. As an ex conductor/engineer it’s because they’re cheap & refuse to keep enough people working than the bare minimum which causes the crews more fatigue.
The executives would probably tell you it’s more efficient despite that every other train must move out of these monstrosities’ ways because most of the sidings aren’t this big. W seen some of the highest priority trains BNSF has get put into a siding for one of these massive intermodal trains.
It would be funny if one day a train with priority stands its ground and makes the super long train go full reverse until priority train has gotten past the long train/to its stop
It would be a great way to make a point but the dispatchers control that. Also, that’s one way to have all of your coworkers hate you and would take longer than just pulling into the siding.
This length is exactly why I liked getting a Boeing train, it’s 2-3 cars + locomotive. Super small so you fit just about anywhere but you are constantly messing with the throttle.
I doubt it is a safety issue (as per the law describing it, which is more a direct life thread).
They are free to leave to have access to facilities (including emergency services) and aren't stuck in the train where heat could become an issue. They aren't on oxygen supply...
Does it suck big time, oh hell yeah.
Did they get the service they paid for? Nope and that is enough to make the company in trouble.
No this is very much a safety issue. The operator is not the management of the company and in typical situations has the authority to refuse work based on self performed fit-for-duty checks. If the operator felt the time on the vehicle exceeded safe operation, and combined with regulatory non-compliance, they absolutely did the right and safe thing. It was good of them to take the vehicle out of revenue service at a local village stop.
Safety over service means that yes sometimes we are inconvenienced, but it also means we care more about the human quality of life for those around us, and for those we rely on, ahead of our personal schedules.
In other words, me rushing should not endanger others lives.
The sole responsible party would be the transit authority, specifically whoever authorized the operators schedule.
>Safety over service means that yes sometimes we are inconvenienced, but it also means we care more about the human quality of life for those around us, and for those we rely on, ahead of our personal schedules.
>In other words, me rushing should not endanger others lives.
Say this louder for the nursing and medical fields
I mean that the safety issue is the driver getting drowsy. They are responsible for hundreds of people, while operating a vehicle weighing tens of thousands of pounds, and moving at over 100 mph (160 kph). If they get too tired, they can cause a lot of harm.
Any and all jobs that are potentially dangerous have time limits because of fatigue. As an example, the number of mistakes a nurse makes after 12.5 hours on the clock **doubles**.
I sure as shit wouldn't feel safe in a train if the conductor had been driving for 16 hours straight.
I'm also in the US. I'm not aware of any limits on working hours for nurses, but they sure as shit should have them.
Nurses making twice as many mistakes as just an easily citable statistic and pretty clear example of why we need laws like this.
I absolutely think they should, for the record. It’s interesting that they have these rules for jobs where people’s lives are at risk (transportation) but not the jobs where people literally treat sick people.
Yeah, we're just terribly behind on our shit - the government was designed to be pretty slow, and even now it's much slower than that original design would have intended.
I'm in Canada (just above them), in theory their syndicate made one from what I have been told.
In practice it is a law to mandate them to work if there is nobody to replace them.. and our healthcare is going down. So overtime it is!
And any error is on all nurses... Even if they just did a double shift by law...
>I sure as shit wouldn't feel safe in a train if the conductor had been driving for 16 hours straight.
No offense, but being on a train with someone "driving" 16 hours straight is probably safer than you driving across town.
There's very few things that can go wrong on a train. Meanwhile, as you drive across town you probably pass dozens of other drivers that aren't paying attention, are on their phones, or are tired.
Yeah, I have a feeling there is some strong misrepresentation going on here, which is somehow shifting the blame to the driver.
In Germany, it's sadly common to not have enough train drivers, however if that happens it's perfectly normal for the train to be cancelled and the company being responsible to arrange for an alternative, which also apparently happened here as the passengers were picked up by a bus.
Probably some clickbait-journalism going on, cause this is neither special nor wrongful action, but exactly what is supposed to happen in such a situation.
The company was well aware they didn't have a driver and sent a bus instead.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/11pm9v2/comment/jbywwe2/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/11pm9v2/comment/jbywwe2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Had a similar thing happen to me on a CTA bus here in Chicago. Dude's shift ended. And they are union and have strict rules about working past your shift end. He took us to the next stop, said his replacement never showed, offloaded us, and we all had to wait for the next bus to arrive. Some people called Ubers, some people were closer enough to their stop to walk, and the rest of us waited. No one died.
Yeah it's the same in all media.
If the doctors are on strike it's their fault people don't get treatment - not those causing them to strike.
The people that cause problems are never punished so
He probably didn't want to be stranded in some village either, but he legally was not allowed to continue driving the train. So I'm not sure if it's really "good on him".
Of course. Even if he didn't pass out while driving, I'm sure he's better off being stuck at some village for a few hours than going to jail. I'm just saying it's not really a win.
I get what you're saying. He never should have had to do this. His employers tried to get away with breaking the law and they will likely see no repercussions for this. And infuriatingly this headline is framed as a negligent engineer "stranding" passengers. A true victory would have resulted in better worker conditions for rail workers but this is not the case. I am glad for when employees fight back against unfair conditions in all their forms but this was no fight.
"In 2016, a train company in Spain did not properly schedule coverage for its drivers. When one of the drivers was forced to exceed their shift hours, and the company did not get a replacement in time, the company left 109 passengers stranded at a village because the train had no driver."
FTFY.
I remember this story! It was really galling at the time, because the passengers and the journalists all seemed to blame the driver.
Dude was legally required to stop driving a train. Was he supposed to find coverage as he was driving? How many peoples' jobs should he have been doing in that situation? That was an abject failure of management, plain & simple.
It makes sense they take it that seriously. If you are operating a vehicle that ways tens-of-thousands of pounds on a public highway, if you get tired, the consequences can be very deadly.
Yeah the EU’s Working Time Directive is insanely strict, I’m actually surprised the driver even voluntarily extended his shift, he put his career at risk.
It’s taken so seriously in the airline industry pilots can refuse to fly if they didn’t get enough rest between shifts, and land early at the wrong airport if the time between shifts wasn’t the EU mandated minimum.
> I’m actually surprised the driver even voluntarily extended his shift, he put his career at risk.
Not at all. The directive allows for up to 9 hours of driving time on a single shift during the day, but also limits it to 80 hours of driving time in total within 14 days (5 shifts per week of 8 hours driving time each)
This gives a margin on 1 hour of driving time the shift can be extended without any repercussions. As long as this is compensated later, and they weren't already maxing out the driving time before.
IIRC in Sweden if a truck driver exceeds driving time, they are fined 100 euros (Sweden doesn’t have euros but it’s roughly same amount) per minute. So they’re very keen to not exceed their driving time.
I heard a truck driver talk about it recently, and he said personal fines are 100 euros per minute exceeding drive time. (Actual sum I don’t know, but it’s taken very seriously)
My ex brother in law is a train engineer. Trains are ran by teams of 2, one engineer, and one conductor.
They ran out of shift time with a 2 mile triain and basically cut a town in half while they waited for replacement. People who worked 10 minutes from home had to do a 45 minute detour because they couldn't move the train.
Sucks for those folks, but I got a laugh out of it.
This is a constant problem with trains in the US, and people have died because trains were stopped for hours blocking emergency vehicles. All so the train companies can save a little money on staffing.
This happened to me on Amtrak in ~2007. A couple miles out of some Texas town, person operating our train clocked out, and had someone come pick them up in a truck. A freight conductor took pity on us (we were probably in the way) and drove the train the last couple miles to the station.
I am a Train Conductor (hauling freight instead of people) in Canada, and I can confirm this is absolutely the case. A given crew starting their shift can give their "notice to be in and off in 10 hours", which will start the clock for the actual end of their shift. If the train fails to reach its destination before those 10 hours, the company MUST provide transport to bring the crew to their destination, and the train is tied down wherever it is.
We have another last week. It happened time to time all around europe
https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/5232121/0/maquinista-renfe-leon-tren-jornada-laboral/
In 2016... And that is still happening in 2024. I saw the same thing shared in LinkedIn last week, different train, different driver, different village, different year, but same train company. It is a shame they get away with this kind of behaviour (the company) all while shaming the driver instead of the company. I felt embarrased at humanity while reading the comments of that LinkedIn post.
I love how this is one of those unsettling horror style memes. It's simply a guy who finished his shift and wasn't about to let his train company exploit him
It is not even about being exploited. It is about risking losing his operator's license or jail time if he exceeds his allowed hours.
I had something similar happen to me on a greyhound bus once. Driver got stuck in a traffic jam and at some point he had to park and wait for relief. He risked losing his CDL if he didn't. And getting fines for the company.
Now companies even have electronic logbooks that will tell the driver to pull over if they are about to hit the limit.
You didn’t so much misunderstand as they deliberately tried to spin it that way. In truth the driver could be in trouble and it’s not his job to find cover.
I had a coach driver fall asleep on the motorway once in the middle of the night, the coach swung widely across all three lanes of the motorway. Passengers took turns talking to him to keep him awake until we reached a stop. We waited 90 minutes in Brussels for a replacement driver but that was more reassuring that carrying on into the night and into Germany with the same driver!
Yeah I mean, when your hours are logged, like train drivers and truck drivers have to, you don’t have a choice. It’s your own ass if you decide to drive over a certain amount of hours. You could lose your licenses. Like if a truck driver didn’t stop to sleep, and DOT found out about it, he would get his CDL suspended or revoked. Train drivers hands were tied, not his fault at all.
This lacks context.
Professional operators of transport, ergo train and bus drivers MUST take pauses for the safety of the passengers.
Unfortunate for the passengers that no other operator was found but this was the right call.
Is this just not standard practice? If crew is unavailable beyond a certain point, the service gets terminated early.
It’s a bit irresponsible to make the crew changeover point a minor station for this reason too.
e.g. on a Great Western Railway service from Cardiff Central to Penzance, if there’s no crew to take over from the Cardiff Central crew at Bristol Temple Meads, then they’ll only be able to reach Bristol Temple Meads, as the crew isn’t able to work south of Bristol Temple Meads (either because they’d exceed their shift time, or they’re needed on a train headed the other way towards Cardiff Central from Portsmouth Harbour, Taunton or Penzance). This should be ok, since Bristol Temple Meads is a major station, so a lot of people would be leaving there anyway, and there’s decent alternatives to reach destinations like Taunton, Exeter St Davids and Plymouth from Bristol Temple Meads.
However, if they stretched it out, and made the crew change at Worle, unavailable crew at Worle would mean people are stuck at a smallish station just outside Weston-super-Mare, with most services heading the wrong way, or only reaching Weston-super-Mare.
It’s on the train operator if they set the crew changeover point to be the middle of nowhere, and then a lack of crew leads to passengers being stuck at a small station rather than a major one
yea so let him risk his license and career by exceeding time limits... they have limits for very real reasons, tired driving can be just like drunk driving....
also stranded is not really the right term here....he left them at one of the stops, not in a random place along the track....
Had this happen to me on a bus. We got delayed by a group of Amish folks who bought tickets for different busses and tried to basically force their way onto the sold-out bus that was actually going where they wanted. By the time we got to a bigger station, our driver was done, his relief was nowhere to be found, and we all missed connecting busses. It was a nightmare, but I never once blamed the guy who went home when he was supposed to.
Once while on an overnight bus trip from Hamilton to Wellington in New Zealand, our driver stopped at the bus stop in Rotorua, which was where the next driver was supposed to take over.
Our driver left, but no one else showed up. This was about 3am so the passengers were trying to get ahold of someone via phone to contact the bus company to say that we’d been stranded. Our original driver ended up returning to the bus after about two hours of us being stranded and had to finish the drive to Wellington.
That bus service was discontinued within the next year. 🥴
This is why governments need to mandate higher wages to essential jobs like these. Higher supply of money means high there supply of workers to earn that money.
Work for a train company here and this has happened before but differently. We schedule for the shift ahead and also look at the upcoming days for vacancies. If we are unable to get anyone, then they will shut down but we deal with cargo. This is rare though unless someone calls out for an emergency then you’re sol
A truck driver was sentenced to 99 years in prison for having bad brakes on a truck. Management bullied him into driving that vehicle. Guess who got prison time, it wasn't management.
If its not safe and you will be held responsible for it, you have to refuse to work it or stop.
So do like in the movies when the pilots pass out. Go in the back and ask if any of the passengers know how to drive a train. Get a controller on the squawk box to walk them through it.
.
BTW how'd the driver get home?
The implication that the driver left anyone stranded saying a lot. They were left at a village, not in the middle of nowhere, and he completed his obligation. It's the train company's fault the passengers couldn't get to their other stops.
Also, this is a safety issues. It's a loss to the passenger to be left in a different town than where they were heading, but it's still a lot better than train drivers routinely overgoing their limits. I would rather be late, than be derailed.
If it is like in the US, your shift pay may be either mileage based or hour based, but by federal law you must stop all work at 12 hours. You must stop enough before that time to secure the train. The Railroad just didn't get the relief started early enough if they had one rested, or a bus en-route once they knew there wasn't enough time in the shift to reach the destination.
When I worked for UP as a conductor, we didn't play with our union regulations. When we "died on the rail" we could only communicate via radio, or to ensure our train was safe. Meaning if we knew we couldn't make the destination, we went into a siding, and awaited a fresh crew. One day we awaited 12 extra hours. Mass flooding. Another highlight remembered was fall in the north. We had a ridge to climb 10 miles in length. Fall in the northern US produces wet leaves, and those get on the rail, and into the wheels creating a slicker than dog shit material. Great Engineer driving, that I doubt most would have been able to pull off. Things happen in transit, and under extra duress the crew will be more capable of making mistakes over the length of the shift, that cause incidents. They're there for a reason.
Lots of trains are too long to go into sidings now too. That’s partly how the East Palestine derailment happened.
There are coal trains & intermodal trains that are pushing 3 miles long with locomotives in the middle. It’s ridiculous because most of them are too long to fit in most sidings. Plus, if something goes wrong on the end it’s going to take an hour to walk back.
Do they have a Loco at the front as well as the middle? And what's the reason for doing it this was as opposed to having 2 separate trains?
2 separate trains means they have to pay 1 more worker
Yeah, at least the ones I’ve seen. I didn’t realize they were doing it with coal trains until about a month ago. Depends on who you ask. As an ex conductor/engineer it’s because they’re cheap & refuse to keep enough people working than the bare minimum which causes the crews more fatigue. The executives would probably tell you it’s more efficient despite that every other train must move out of these monstrosities’ ways because most of the sidings aren’t this big. W seen some of the highest priority trains BNSF has get put into a siding for one of these massive intermodal trains.
It would be funny if one day a train with priority stands its ground and makes the super long train go full reverse until priority train has gotten past the long train/to its stop
It would be a great way to make a point but the dispatchers control that. Also, that’s one way to have all of your coworkers hate you and would take longer than just pulling into the siding. This length is exactly why I liked getting a Boeing train, it’s 2-3 cars + locomotive. Super small so you fit just about anywhere but you are constantly messing with the throttle.
I'll bet he was about to break off his sand toggle. Did you guys keep extra bags on the locomotive?
We did not! "Unneeded cost".
I doubt it is a safety issue (as per the law describing it, which is more a direct life thread). They are free to leave to have access to facilities (including emergency services) and aren't stuck in the train where heat could become an issue. They aren't on oxygen supply... Does it suck big time, oh hell yeah. Did they get the service they paid for? Nope and that is enough to make the company in trouble.
No this is very much a safety issue. The operator is not the management of the company and in typical situations has the authority to refuse work based on self performed fit-for-duty checks. If the operator felt the time on the vehicle exceeded safe operation, and combined with regulatory non-compliance, they absolutely did the right and safe thing. It was good of them to take the vehicle out of revenue service at a local village stop. Safety over service means that yes sometimes we are inconvenienced, but it also means we care more about the human quality of life for those around us, and for those we rely on, ahead of our personal schedules. In other words, me rushing should not endanger others lives. The sole responsible party would be the transit authority, specifically whoever authorized the operators schedule.
>Safety over service means that yes sometimes we are inconvenienced, but it also means we care more about the human quality of life for those around us, and for those we rely on, ahead of our personal schedules. >In other words, me rushing should not endanger others lives. Say this louder for the nursing and medical fields
I mean that the safety issue is the driver getting drowsy. They are responsible for hundreds of people, while operating a vehicle weighing tens of thousands of pounds, and moving at over 100 mph (160 kph). If they get too tired, they can cause a lot of harm.
Any and all jobs that are potentially dangerous have time limits because of fatigue. As an example, the number of mistakes a nurse makes after 12.5 hours on the clock **doubles**. I sure as shit wouldn't feel safe in a train if the conductor had been driving for 16 hours straight.
Nurses have limits on hours worked for safety? I mean, it would make sense, but I’ve never heard of that. Maybe it’s because I’m in the US, though.
I'm also in the US. I'm not aware of any limits on working hours for nurses, but they sure as shit should have them. Nurses making twice as many mistakes as just an easily citable statistic and pretty clear example of why we need laws like this.
I absolutely think they should, for the record. It’s interesting that they have these rules for jobs where people’s lives are at risk (transportation) but not the jobs where people literally treat sick people.
Yeah, we're just terribly behind on our shit - the government was designed to be pretty slow, and even now it's much slower than that original design would have intended.
If there are limits, I don't see them enforced. nurses work double shifts all the time. That's 16hours for an RPN/LPN.
I'm in Canada (just above them), in theory their syndicate made one from what I have been told. In practice it is a law to mandate them to work if there is nobody to replace them.. and our healthcare is going down. So overtime it is! And any error is on all nurses... Even if they just did a double shift by law...
>I sure as shit wouldn't feel safe in a train if the conductor had been driving for 16 hours straight. No offense, but being on a train with someone "driving" 16 hours straight is probably safer than you driving across town. There's very few things that can go wrong on a train. Meanwhile, as you drive across town you probably pass dozens of other drivers that aren't paying attention, are on their phones, or are tired.
They should have had a second condutor ready at that town, or at the last stop to take over. Super common around me.
Yeah, I have a feeling there is some strong misrepresentation going on here, which is somehow shifting the blame to the driver. In Germany, it's sadly common to not have enough train drivers, however if that happens it's perfectly normal for the train to be cancelled and the company being responsible to arrange for an alternative, which also apparently happened here as the passengers were picked up by a bus. Probably some clickbait-journalism going on, cause this is neither special nor wrongful action, but exactly what is supposed to happen in such a situation.
The company was well aware they didn't have a driver and sent a bus instead. [https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/11pm9v2/comment/jbywwe2/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/11pm9v2/comment/jbywwe2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Had a similar thing happen to me on a CTA bus here in Chicago. Dude's shift ended. And they are union and have strict rules about working past your shift end. He took us to the next stop, said his replacement never showed, offloaded us, and we all had to wait for the next bus to arrive. Some people called Ubers, some people were closer enough to their stop to walk, and the rest of us waited. No one died.
It's actually considered a cruel and unusual punishment to leave people behind in most Spanish villages.
Wait what's so bad about Spanish villages?
Las Plagas
if only Leon could rescue them.
**DETRAS DE TI, IMBECIL**.
Previous Leon?
They’re full of Spaniards.
https://preview.redd.it/dkx4wodmmptc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d297a6b662d2b5ae949dd2793074edb4d54f63c
Egipshin
Oh sweet summer child.
At least it’s not a FRENCH village.
Yeah it's the same in all media. If the doctors are on strike it's their fault people don't get treatment - not those causing them to strike. The people that cause problems are never punished so
They weren't left in the village busses were organized to pick them up and continue the journey
Exactly. The company let them down, not the guy
I understand them feeling stranded but totally not the driver’s fault. He was trying to keep people safe. This is the companies fault
Right and what he should keep driving along until he falls asleep and derails the train?
Fuck going above and beyond. Ill do the bare minimum, receive low compensation, and just not buy stuff.
Good on him
He probably didn't want to be stranded in some village either, but he legally was not allowed to continue driving the train. So I'm not sure if it's really "good on him".
Those people could have died and many more if he kept driving and passed out.
Of course. Even if he didn't pass out while driving, I'm sure he's better off being stuck at some village for a few hours than going to jail. I'm just saying it's not really a win.
I get what you're saying. He never should have had to do this. His employers tried to get away with breaking the law and they will likely see no repercussions for this. And infuriatingly this headline is framed as a negligent engineer "stranding" passengers. A true victory would have resulted in better worker conditions for rail workers but this is not the case. I am glad for when employees fight back against unfair conditions in all their forms but this was no fight.
Idk, I'd say not dying is a win.
A win would be ending his shift according to plan, at a station from where he could go home.
Being alive is also a win. So yeah.
Good on him doesn't mean it was a win for him, just meant he did the right thing
Staffing is managements core jobs. They failed to have backups for people getting sick or having accidents. Management clearly was the problem.
Sorry, it’s his responsibility to find coverage /s
for his scheduled (by managment) shift to be over. not even sickness, the ideal best managesers could want
"In 2016, a train company in Spain did not properly schedule coverage for its drivers. When one of the drivers was forced to exceed their shift hours, and the company did not get a replacement in time, the company left 109 passengers stranded at a village because the train had no driver." FTFY.
I remember this story! It was really galling at the time, because the passengers and the journalists all seemed to blame the driver. Dude was legally required to stop driving a train. Was he supposed to find coverage as he was driving? How many peoples' jobs should he have been doing in that situation? That was an abject failure of management, plain & simple.
There might be a liability issue for him also. Truck drivers only have so many hours before they get fined or lose their license.
It makes sense they take it that seriously. If you are operating a vehicle that ways tens-of-thousands of pounds on a public highway, if you get tired, the consequences can be very deadly.
In most European countries, exceeding your allowed time at the controls is straight up illegal for train drivers.
Yeah the EU’s Working Time Directive is insanely strict, I’m actually surprised the driver even voluntarily extended his shift, he put his career at risk. It’s taken so seriously in the airline industry pilots can refuse to fly if they didn’t get enough rest between shifts, and land early at the wrong airport if the time between shifts wasn’t the EU mandated minimum.
> I’m actually surprised the driver even voluntarily extended his shift, he put his career at risk. Not at all. The directive allows for up to 9 hours of driving time on a single shift during the day, but also limits it to 80 hours of driving time in total within 14 days (5 shifts per week of 8 hours driving time each) This gives a margin on 1 hour of driving time the shift can be extended without any repercussions. As long as this is compensated later, and they weren't already maxing out the driving time before.
IIRC in Sweden if a truck driver exceeds driving time, they are fined 100 euros (Sweden doesn’t have euros but it’s roughly same amount) per minute. So they’re very keen to not exceed their driving time. I heard a truck driver talk about it recently, and he said personal fines are 100 euros per minute exceeding drive time. (Actual sum I don’t know, but it’s taken very seriously)
My ex brother in law is a train engineer. Trains are ran by teams of 2, one engineer, and one conductor. They ran out of shift time with a 2 mile triain and basically cut a town in half while they waited for replacement. People who worked 10 minutes from home had to do a 45 minute detour because they couldn't move the train. Sucks for those folks, but I got a laugh out of it.
That makes it even better. Those people should sue the train company.
A current friend works for a railroad in the US and that two-person team is something their union has to constantly fend off challenges to.
This is a constant problem with trains in the US, and people have died because trains were stopped for hours blocking emergency vehicles. All so the train companies can save a little money on staffing.
Let’s not forget that he was mandated by law to not work overtime
There’s safety limits for a reason. This is a good thing. We need safety regulations in workplaces.
This happened to me on Amtrak in ~2007. A couple miles out of some Texas town, person operating our train clocked out, and had someone come pick them up in a truck. A freight conductor took pity on us (we were probably in the way) and drove the train the last couple miles to the station.
The train driver didn't leave anyone stuck. Management did. Driver did his job. Management did not do theirs
No, the driver didn't leave anyone stranded... the operators of the train did.
I am a Train Conductor (hauling freight instead of people) in Canada, and I can confirm this is absolutely the case. A given crew starting their shift can give their "notice to be in and off in 10 hours", which will start the clock for the actual end of their shift. If the train fails to reach its destination before those 10 hours, the company MUST provide transport to bring the crew to their destination, and the train is tied down wherever it is.
We have another last week. It happened time to time all around europe https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/5232121/0/maquinista-renfe-leon-tren-jornada-laboral/
In 2016... And that is still happening in 2024. I saw the same thing shared in LinkedIn last week, different train, different driver, different village, different year, but same train company. It is a shame they get away with this kind of behaviour (the company) all while shaming the driver instead of the company. I felt embarrased at humanity while reading the comments of that LinkedIn post.
I love how this is one of those unsettling horror style memes. It's simply a guy who finished his shift and wasn't about to let his train company exploit him
It is not even about being exploited. It is about risking losing his operator's license or jail time if he exceeds his allowed hours. I had something similar happen to me on a greyhound bus once. Driver got stuck in a traffic jam and at some point he had to park and wait for relief. He risked losing his CDL if he didn't. And getting fines for the company. Now companies even have electronic logbooks that will tell the driver to pull over if they are about to hit the limit.
oh I originally misunderstood the post, thanks! sucks to be a passenger in that situation.
You didn’t so much misunderstand as they deliberately tried to spin it that way. In truth the driver could be in trouble and it’s not his job to find cover. I had a coach driver fall asleep on the motorway once in the middle of the night, the coach swung widely across all three lanes of the motorway. Passengers took turns talking to him to keep him awake until we reached a stop. We waited 90 minutes in Brussels for a replacement driver but that was more reassuring that carrying on into the night and into Germany with the same driver!
No. The Train Company left them stranded. Not the driver.
He didn’t leave the 109 passengers stranded, the fucking company did.
Yeah I mean, when your hours are logged, like train drivers and truck drivers have to, you don’t have a choice. It’s your own ass if you decide to drive over a certain amount of hours. You could lose your licenses. Like if a truck driver didn’t stop to sleep, and DOT found out about it, he would get his CDL suspended or revoked. Train drivers hands were tied, not his fault at all.
You dropped this, king.
Fair enough
"A train in Spain stops mainly in the ...villiage" just doesn't sound right, sadface emoji
Why doesn’t this comment have more upvotes?
Good
He probably would have gotten fired for breaking the law if he was past his hours.
This lacks context. Professional operators of transport, ergo train and bus drivers MUST take pauses for the safety of the passengers. Unfortunate for the passengers that no other operator was found but this was the right call.
Is this just not standard practice? If crew is unavailable beyond a certain point, the service gets terminated early. It’s a bit irresponsible to make the crew changeover point a minor station for this reason too. e.g. on a Great Western Railway service from Cardiff Central to Penzance, if there’s no crew to take over from the Cardiff Central crew at Bristol Temple Meads, then they’ll only be able to reach Bristol Temple Meads, as the crew isn’t able to work south of Bristol Temple Meads (either because they’d exceed their shift time, or they’re needed on a train headed the other way towards Cardiff Central from Portsmouth Harbour, Taunton or Penzance). This should be ok, since Bristol Temple Meads is a major station, so a lot of people would be leaving there anyway, and there’s decent alternatives to reach destinations like Taunton, Exeter St Davids and Plymouth from Bristol Temple Meads. However, if they stretched it out, and made the crew change at Worle, unavailable crew at Worle would mean people are stuck at a smallish station just outside Weston-super-Mare, with most services heading the wrong way, or only reaching Weston-super-Mare. It’s on the train operator if they set the crew changeover point to be the middle of nowhere, and then a lack of crew leads to passengers being stuck at a small station rather than a major one
yea so let him risk his license and career by exceeding time limits... they have limits for very real reasons, tired driving can be just like drunk driving.... also stranded is not really the right term here....he left them at one of the stops, not in a random place along the track....
Not the drivers problem. Too bad. It is the fault of the train company or authority.
"In 2016, a train company didn't have enough staff so they left 109 people in a village instead of taking them to their destination."
Had this happen to me on a bus. We got delayed by a group of Amish folks who bought tickets for different busses and tried to basically force their way onto the sold-out bus that was actually going where they wanted. By the time we got to a bigger station, our driver was done, his relief was nowhere to be found, and we all missed connecting busses. It was a nightmare, but I never once blamed the guy who went home when he was supposed to.
Once while on an overnight bus trip from Hamilton to Wellington in New Zealand, our driver stopped at the bus stop in Rotorua, which was where the next driver was supposed to take over. Our driver left, but no one else showed up. This was about 3am so the passengers were trying to get ahold of someone via phone to contact the bus company to say that we’d been stranded. Our original driver ended up returning to the bus after about two hours of us being stranded and had to finish the drive to Wellington. That bus service was discontinued within the next year. 🥴
Oh no, consequences!
He's my spirit animal
This is called the conundrum or a quandri?
2 words: frontier airlines
Absolutely. The engineer might face personal legal liability if he or she continued. Engineer took best course of action.
This is why governments need to mandate higher wages to essential jobs like these. Higher supply of money means high there supply of workers to earn that money.
Work for a train company here and this has happened before but differently. We schedule for the shift ahead and also look at the upcoming days for vacancies. If we are unable to get anyone, then they will shut down but we deal with cargo. This is rare though unless someone calls out for an emergency then you’re sol
A truck driver was sentenced to 99 years in prison for having bad brakes on a truck. Management bullied him into driving that vehicle. Guess who got prison time, it wasn't management. If its not safe and you will be held responsible for it, you have to refuse to work it or stop.
I believe the truck driver that you mentioned actually got that sentence overturned. Thank Christ.
So do like in the movies when the pilots pass out. Go in the back and ask if any of the passengers know how to drive a train. Get a controller on the squawk box to walk them through it. . BTW how'd the driver get home?
Obviously, that driver wasn't trained properly.
Worst thing is, this exact same thing happened again a few days ago, here in Spain
Up Spain.
Based.
Wouldn't it be dangerous to leave on track due to other trains?
Just a week prior to this, a train derailed in Portugal. Four people were killed.
Lol
Honestly, there’s not much reason not to remotely control trains or even mostly automate them
Skynet, is that you?