Has anyone seen a good analysis on what went wrong? I found a USAToday article with a partial fragment saying that one of the wheels had a failed bearing, and this was the proximal cause of the derailment. It seems to me that (as pointed out in the article) the mean-time-to-failure increases with the length of the train; perhaps nonlinearly? I think the failure rate of bearings is proportional to the length of the train, but you can't "amortize" failure: any failed bearing would lead to a catastrophic error?
To my mind this means that things like ECP (which have been removed) might've fixed the issue, but the fundamental problem is the train length, which has been discussed (in all of its negatives) here, before.
In that sense, the train company is directly at fault: they are engaging in unsafe practices in order to remain profitable, and the practices are fundamentally not safe-able (to make up a word).
To my mind this means that things like ECP (which have been removed) might've fixed the issue, but the fundamental problem is the train length, which has been discussed (in all of its negatives) here, before.
In that sense, the train company is directly at fault: they are engaging in unsafe practices in order to remain profitable, and the practices are fundamentally not safe-able (to make up a word).