Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: dents Due to the Personal Equation Can some railroad and other accidents affecting human life, due to personal error or miscalculation and heretofore mysterious, be explained by the constitution of the human mind? If they can be so explained, they are to some extent preventable. By other accidents than those of railroads I mean such as occur in the work of drivers, telegraphers, pilots, and surgeons. The reasoning that applies to the one applies to the other. When we consider the nature of railroad accidents we discover them to fall into a natural classification: First are those due to defective material, as broken wheels, rods, bridges, viaducts, etc., bursting boilers, and defective brakes. Next are those due to theelements and the earth, as from the sinking of tracks, the washing away of bridges; from ice, snow, freshets, storms, wind, and fire. Lastly, and most interesting of all, and most deplorable, are those due to what may be called the personal equation. These fall into two or three sub-classes: First are those due to failure of deliberate judgment, as miscalculation of materials in bridges, misjudgment of the force of motive power and resisting power, and the like. Second are those due to sudden loss of self-control on the part of operatives, from fright, excitement, from panic and nervous stampeding; also from intense preoccupation, with an accidental situation. The train breaks down, and in the excitement both conductor and brakeman forget about putting signals on the track to the rear of the train,' and so a rear-end collision results. Third are those accidents due to absent-mindedness—the lack of mental attention to the thing in hand when the thing is important. A man leaves a switch turned wrong from this cause, forgets to put out the proper signal, and tr...