“As trains — many carrying hazardous material — have grown longer, crews should not be getting smaller,” said Eddie Hall, the president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union. He praised the FRA for taking the step President Joe Biden promised. Hall said keeping two people in the cab of a locomotive is crucial now that railroads rely on longer trains that routinely stretch for miles.
We don’t know, because the norm has been two-man teams. The question shouldn’t be “is this making things safer”? The question needs to be “will reducing crew sizes still be as safe”? The burden of proof needs to be on the rail operators to show how they have mitigating controls in place to prevent failures which may have been caught by that extra human operator. Ultimately, this is about systems failure and avoiding low incidence, high damage failures. While technical controls are fantastic and should be used, they are often inflexible and don’t respond in the same way that a human can to prevent or mitigate a disaster. Humans are often a critical layer in the Swiss Cheese Model for preventing these sorts of failures. Fewer humans may well mean fewer chances to stop something getting through.
That all said, if railroads really want to have data driven safety, then we really need an organization, similar to the FAA, which is empowered to enforce safety standards and require companies to comply with safety recommendations. And I doubt the railroads would be happy about that. It might mean actually implementing safety upgrades and maintenance in a timely manner.