Like aircraft, trains to have black boxes soon

New Delhi

Considering the safety of passengers, the Indian Railways has decided to install the Loco Cab Voice Recording devices in the locomotives, a Railway Ministry official said. The system is in the developmental stage, the official added.

The video/voice recording system in locomotives would provide invaluable data to investigators to help them understand the sequence of events leading to an accident and to identify operational issues and human factors, including crew performance.

The black box is currently used in aircraft. It is made of two separate pieces of equipment — the flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder.

The Railways had in September rolled out smart coaches equipped with sensors that can detect defects in bearings, wheels and railway track. The official said the black box introduced in the smart coach had a multi-dimensional communication interface to provide information on passengers and coach condition in real time. According to the official, these sensors would give inputs to those in control rooms to avoid accidents, carry out maintenance and help improve the efficiency of operations.