Originally Posted by
cncpc
With respect, it is different on the ground. There is a period before incapacitation in which you know something isn't right and can pull over.
No, it's not.
In an ideal world, yes, that can happen, but life doesn't always afford you that opportunity. The big one is obviously fatigue, but sudden incapacitation is often given as a cause for accidents. "Blacked out", "Medical episode", even the Waterfall prang 20 years ago didn't give the Driver the opportunity to either apply the brakes, or even remove his foot from the deadman pedal and the train rolled over killing a bunch of passengers...