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Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

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Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#381

Post by hylaride »

carlmr wrote: post #353
svara wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as DB goes, I'm pretty sure it's mostly an issue of systemic technical and consequently social collapse. The system runs beyond its limits and consequently the culture collapses because the people inside learn they have no agency. The German rail network is quite good on paper, with dense and high frequency connections even to relatively remote locations. But keeping that functional (particularly with constant…

>invest more relative to their passenger load. For Switzerland does this account for the almost double salaries or only absolute spending? If you spend 1€ in Switzerland I imagine you get much less work output than for 1€ in Germany.

Raw investment numbers don't necessarily matter, but the productivity of said number. Even if things are more expensive in Switzerland, if they make efficient use of said investment, then it can work out ok (or even better).

I have no idea if this is actually the case, but you have to take that into account or Switzerland would not be as successful as it is. Higher incomes have historically been a symptom of productivity (and while median incomes and productivity have decoupled, especially in the angosphere, it is still usually correlated).

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#382

Post by abigail95 »

croes wrote: post #320
abigail95 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is my time less valuable than an ambulance or doctor? You have to make a lot of assumptions and normative judgements for that to be true, which I reject. Morally DB (through the driver) is the one lying and saying things like "cannot stop". They don't want to stop - that's different. They've already broken the social contract, I'm free to do the same.

EMS on duty vs you on a train, doesn't take a lot of assumptions to guess whos wasted time risks more lives. And it's not don't want to stop, it's not allowed to stop. Do you think it's the driver's decision when and where to stop. Unless in case of emergency there s strict rules they have to follow. One simple rule for everybody is: Never ever waste the time of EMS.

What if I get 10 people off the train for one EMS call.

What about 100? If you bring an absolute like that to a philosophical argument you're backing yourself into a corner.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#383

Post by Tommix11 »

Zealotux wrote: post #221
BloondAndDoom wrote: post #131

I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. I grew up in 3rd world country and if this were to happen, train would literally stop somewhere, anywhere. (With the assumption it’s safe from crewing into another train). But the idea that you go 55 minutes just because of policy; and skip 15 stations is crazy to me. Again with the assumptions that it can safely stop somewhere for 5m and I’m pretty sure the ans…

I worked for a massive German company you heard of, this sounds more like the typical German philosophy of strictly following the process -- as absurd as it might be -- and refusing to take initiative for anything that is not explicitly defined as one's responsibility. As a French, the culture shock was brutal and I never really got around that work attitude. I went through a similar issue back when I used to take a…

The German philosophy is also very much prevalent in Sweden.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#384

Post by trinix912 »

delfinom wrote: post #278
manarth wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And French, as Germany is adjacent to France. There are train connections to Scandinavia, so let's add Swedish, Danish and Finnish. Also Dutch and Polish to accommodate the other adjacent countries.

Look, as an EU country citizen, English is more or less the defacto language of the EU, regardless of what politicians declare. Everyone in the EU speaks english in some form as even traveling to a next door country like you state requires communication. There are cases where in Belgium you will see signs in 4 languages (Dutch, French, Flemish and English) Also if you ever travel in Japan, they have signs, especially…

Don't you think same could be said about German and French? I still remember the time when passports from my (now EU) country used French instead of English, and when signs for tourists were in German.

An English announcement wouldn't hurt but we don't have them on our trains here either.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#385

Post by potato3732842 »

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #131

I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. I grew up in 3rd world country and if this were to happen, train would literally stop somewhere, anywhere. (With the assumption it’s safe from crewing into another train). But the idea that you go 55 minutes just because of policy; and skip 15 stations is crazy to me. Again with the assumptions that it can safely stop somewhere for 5m and I’m pretty sure the ans…

>I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world.

When every useful idiot is screeching about statistical optimization you lose any optimization for anything that isn't measured or isn't optimized for.

Like it's not hard to imagine the breathless comments on HN about how trains should never(TM) stop without a platform if they'd have stopped the train on both sides and some old lady tripped and fell and broke her nose on the rail.

It reminds me of letting a child that's too young to not be stupid pick it's own dinner and it picks of candy then to the surprise of nobody with a brain it's cranky later despite being calorically satisfied by the numbers.

>The modern world where everything is “safety issue” and “someone else’s problem” is where we lost our ways, and it’s never coming back.

It'll come back if there's something bad enough that happens to kick society back to a point where "lol we ain't got the spare resources for that shut up and go away" becomes an acceptable way to deal with the peddlers of these things. But anything that gets us that far won't be pretty.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#386

Post by low_tech_love »

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #131

I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. I grew up in 3rd world country and if this were to happen, train would literally stop somewhere, anywhere. (With the assumption it’s safe from crewing into another train). But the idea that you go 55 minutes just because of policy; and skip 15 stations is crazy to me. Again with the assumptions that it can safely stop somewhere for 5m and I’m pretty sure the ans…

I’d say it’s mostly a North-European thing, not the whole world. I am a latin american living in Sweden and the overwhelming lack of empathy and humanity you’ll experience in the healthcare system is borderline unbelievable (until you learn to expect and deal with it). They trust the system so much that whenever it doesn’t work, it’s basically ”well bummer”. You become the 1% for which the system has failed, and you’re supposed to just take one for the team (since everyone else is having a good time anyway). The thing is simply that you have to learn to see the good side of the system and understand that you can’t have the cake and eat it too, unfortunately.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#387

Post by [deleted] »

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #230
BloondAndDoom wrote: post #131

I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. I grew up in 3rd world country and if this were to happen, train would literally stop somewhere, anywhere. (With the assumption it’s safe from crewing into another train). But the idea that you go 55 minutes just because of policy; and skip 15 stations is crazy to me. Again with the assumptions that it can safely stop somewhere for 5m and I’m pretty sure the ans…

Note that DB definitely has processes to add stops ad-hoc. It's just that nobody bothered in this case.

[deleted]

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#388

Post by mc32 »

rjzzleep wrote: post #354
svara wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as DB goes, I'm pretty sure it's mostly an issue of systemic technical and consequently social collapse. The system runs beyond its limits and consequently the culture collapses because the people inside learn they have no agency. The German rail network is quite good on paper, with dense and high frequency connections even to relatively remote locations. But keeping that functional (particularly with constant…

The German rails network went downhill when they decided to socialize the losses and privatize the profit. Failure is blamed on the grunt workers, which are absolutely not interested in taking responsibility as a result of this. The fact that there are rotting railways everywhere and the DB waits until it gets so bad for cities to step in and take over part of the cost is a wonderful example of this. The new ICE's sp…

Could be. It used to be that to get phone service in Germany could take up to a month after putting in the order, that’s when it was state controlled. After the reforms installations were quicker.

So to me, there doesn’t seem to be a panacea except to hold the services accountable in some way.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#389

Post by stockresearcher »

I used DB quite a few times last month and all of the delays and problems were listed on the trip planner website (in German and in English) despite there being no notifications at the departure station and the train driver speaking in German only when communicating.

We had a trip planned in which we needed a specific train. The website said “there has been an incident on the tracks. There will be a delay of 20-50 minutes waiting for a platform. Not all connections will be made,” and that is exactly what happened. This worked for our time window so we took the train. But there were a lot of confused and upset passengers who had absolutely no idea what was going on.

I’m sure DB has many problems, but one of them appears to be communication that surely isn’t too difficult to fix.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#390

Post by potato3732842 »

Zealotux wrote: post #221
BloondAndDoom wrote: post #131

I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. I grew up in 3rd world country and if this were to happen, train would literally stop somewhere, anywhere. (With the assumption it’s safe from crewing into another train). But the idea that you go 55 minutes just because of policy; and skip 15 stations is crazy to me. Again with the assumptions that it can safely stop somewhere for 5m and I’m pretty sure the ans…

I worked for a massive German company you heard of, this sounds more like the typical German philosophy of strictly following the process -- as absurd as it might be -- and refusing to take initiative for anything that is not explicitly defined as one's responsibility. As a French, the culture shock was brutal and I never really got around that work attitude. I went through a similar issue back when I used to take a…

Reminds me of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3EBs7sCOzo

What really ought to bother people more than it does is that within just about any white western country/culture you can run the same comparison with "decently well off" being the german side and "everyone else" being the english side.

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