Opinion: In trying times, wise railroaders shouldn’t clam up to the news media

By William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief, Railway Age Magazine; March 4, 2019

“HOW SAFE ARE AMERICA’S RAILROADS? Lesley Stahl reports on a recent string of crashes on U.S. railroads and the delay in implementing life-saving technology that could have prevented them.” Oh brother. I think you know what CBS 60 Minutes reported on March 3. It’s not pretty. But in my humble opinion, the rail industry can take most of the responsibility for what turned out to be a damaging report, because no one in the rail industry wanted to participate. More on that later. Here, after the fact, unfortunately, is my attempt to shed light on some of the misconceptions and negative picture of our industry the 60 Minutes program perpetuated.

Following are excerpts from the program, which can be viewed at this link. The excerpts are in italics, followed by my comments.

Click here to read the full opinion article.

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