A new exoskeleton to support workers in railways maintenance and renewal operations::A back support exoskeleton has been developed at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology—IIT) to improve railway workers’ safety and conditions for heavy manual material handling during maintenance …
This is awesome. Just think of how much this will improve the quality of life if we can reduce the strain of repetitive stress injuries so people can spend more time enjoying their off time rather than just simply recovering from the wear and tear of their day job.
if only amtrak cared this much about their railroads and workers
Funny you mention Amtrak, as I just yesterday watched this video which shows the current Amtrak experience, explains the history and why it’s currently so far behind the rest of the world. Turns out, it’s been starved of funding from the government for a long time.
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“Amtrak is a state-owned enterprise. This means that Amtrak is a for-profit company, but that the federal government owns all its preferred stock.”
“ Yes, your tax dollars (a tiny portion of them, at least) winds up keeping Amtrak trains on the tracks. Amtrak makes a significant portion of its money from ticket sales, but the company could not exist without the help of federal/state subsidies and billions of dollars in grants.
Amtrak typically sees between 1 and 2 billion dollars of federal money come its way each year. That’s roughly equivalent to a few thousandths of the federal government’s budget. If we took a super simple view of our tax bills, we could say that most Americans spend a couple bucks each year to subsidize Amtrak. Obviously, taxes are way more complicated than that, but it’s helpful to think about.
64% of Amtrak’s money comes directly from ticket sales. The rest comes from a combination of other things, most especially subsidies and grants, though investments and other business activities account for significant revenue as well.”
Now they’ll never need a sick day!
I Imagine the companies treat their equipment maintenance about as well as their track maintenance.
How long till we get reports on the first worker being torn limb from limb when their power suit malfunctions from wear?
Exactly what I was thinking. No thanks, I’ll pass. Edit: the most voted post is the happy oblivious one. Ignorance is bliss.
Fuck me for trying to be optimistic, right?
Of course business will try to exploit this to try and squeeze a little more labour from their workers, but what good is it in constantly being negative about developments like this?
I imagine that you would have complained about Henry Ford’s crazy “40 hour work week” as a cynical ploy to drive up auto sales.
The only problem is that the rail companies all over the world treat their workers like a consumable item. If they had thousands of dollars spare per each rail worker that money would go immediately to the pockets of the executives. As it mostly does today.
