There had once been such a dilemma: a group of children were playing beside the tracks. Nine of them chose to play on a newly built track, while one played on an abandoned old track. Then a train came speeding toward them. What should the driver choose?
The passengers aboard the train in 1975 were not like job applicants sitting in an office before an interviewer, able to make a considered choice. A train traveling at high speed gave them no time to think. Though it was daytime, the train entered a tunnel, where there was no light apart from the Underground lamps.
Everything happened too suddenly. It first crashed into the Moorgate platform where it was meant to stop, then, driven by inertia, plunged into the end of the tunnel and struck the wall. The derailed rear carriages collided with an Underground train already standing at the platform, killing forty-three people.
Even if the passengers had wanted to rush into the driver's cab and "step on the brakes," they could not, because a train cab did not have a "brake" like a car that could simply be stepped on.
Faced with the dazzling array of levers on the control panel, which one was the brake?
Because of this accident, all nineteen dead ends on the London Underground were fitted with protective devices that could stop a train when the driver was unable to brake.
The sound of a train braking was piercing enough, and according to the subsequent investigation, that train had not slowed down at all. The passengers waiting in the station had clearly seen the driver sitting ramrod straight in his seat, staring fixedly ahead. He looked nothing like someone suffering a heart attack.
After four days of excavation, when they found the driver, his hands were