Software failure contributes to rail car fire

Event Year: 2007 Reliability: Confirmed
Country: United States
Industry Type: Transportation
Description:

A rail car fire started when a system failure caused an electrical surge.  The software used to monitor performance did not detect the overheating.  Steven A Feil, the chief operating officer of the Metro told the Metro board of directors that the train’s brake resistor grid, which checks various subsystems and voltage, overheated and caught on fire after the monitoring software malfunctioned.  No one was hurt in the fire.

Impact:

A rail car fire broke out when a system failure caused an electrical surge and the monitoring software did not detect the overheating.  No one was hurt in the fire.