|
|
Article: Blaming the victim?(On Track)
- Article from:
- Railway Track and Structures
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
I recently had the pleasure of reading a well-written piece on grade-crossing safety that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. The reporter talked to several experts, from a cognitive psychologist to the FRA to a professor of industrial and engineering systems at USC. The article discussed several factors, ranging from difficulties in judging the speed of large objects to changing the type of signage so there is one indicator for gated track and a different indicator for non-gated track.
One thing that caught my eye was this paragraph: "The tendency to blame the victim in grade-crossing accidents exasperates the cognitive psychologist. 'That lets the authorities ...