Research Technologies For Uncontrolled Movements

Despite the collaborative effort between government and industry to addressing the issue, uncontrolled movements of railway equipment remains a serious safety concern. The Transportation Safety Board (TSB), in its most recent Watchlist, highlighted the historical significance of these incidents and their potential consequences for employees and communities. TSB expressed renewed concern about the number of uncontrolled movements, noting the existence of an upward trend in their number since 2015, which peaked most recently in 2019 at 78.Uncontrolled movements can happen for a variety of reasons in many operating scenarios which makes the conducting root cause analysis and establishing mitigating measures more complex. While most uncontrolled movements involve few cars and low speed, they have resulted in serious injuries, fatalities, and environmental damage.This study aims to evaluate ways to further reduce the number of uncontrolled movements through the assessment human factors, railway operating practices and technologies. The objective is to identify:1. Select top technologies (existing and proven as well as emerging) that rail industry could use to mitigate uncontrolled movement (UM), including the potential to automate and reduce human error and the feasibility of retrofitting new technologies to current operating environments2. Human Factors (HF) considerations/principles that persist in UM occurrences and identify what mitigation measures can be implemented to reduce these occurrences3. Operational practices, such as Crew Resource Management (CRM), used in other safety critical industries, that could be implemented in a rail operating environment where UM can be a safety risk.