Nothing is more important to railroads than safety. Today, America's railroads are safer than ever, but constantly improving safety remains a top priority. By working to develop and implement the best safety-enhancing technologies, we continue to find new ways to improve our already-stellar safety record.
Providing safe freight transportation for America
America's freight rail leads the way to improving and advancing railroad safety. We constantly research, develop and implement new safety-enhancing technologies and work cooperatively with our employees, suppliers, customers and policymakers to make safety our top priority.
Our railroads and partners are developing a variety of train-control systems, technologies and initiatives to help prevent accidents, reduce human error, identify flaws or problems in equipment, and allow railroads and car owners to perform and plan maintenance on a predictive and performance basis. This focus on safety results in other benefits, too, such as increased capacity, improved productivity and better fuel efficiency.
Preventing accidents before they happen: AAR Safety Innovations
Freight railroads have dramatically improved safety and efficiency through the use of new technology, much of it developed and/or refined at the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads (AAR), and the finest rail research facility in the world. Many of these technological advances are designed to help protect freight cars, locomotives, track and cargo before damage, costly repairs, traffic holdups and derailments occur.
Vehicle car performance detectors – also known as wayside detectors –are a great example of how railroads are deploying the newest advances to improve safety.
- Acoustic Bearing Detectors listen to axle bearings as trains pass their locations. Sophisticated computer software detects sounds associated with various internal flaws in the bearings, allowing defects to be detected early.
- Cracked Wheel Detectors are the latest technology to be employed on the railroad. Internal defects in the wheel are impossible for humans to see and are time consuming to manually inspect. This technology allows wheels to be inspected while a train moves through a specially designed and constructed facility, using ultrasonic technology to look inside each wheel.
New technologies are always in the works. For example, conventional methods use ultrasonic technology to inspect for cracks in the rail. TTCI and a partner company have developed a prototype of a sophisticated laser-based ultrasonic inspection system using pulsed lasers and air-coupled transducers that can monitor the whole rail without physical contact. This is the world's first application of this type of technology.
