Railroad Safety Appliance Act

Railroad Safety Appliance Act

The Safety Appliance Act is a United States federal law that made air brakes and automatic couplers mandatory on all trains in the United States. It was enacted on March 2, 1893 and took effect in 1900, after a 7 year grace period. The act is credited with a sharp drop in accidents on American railroads in the early twentieth century.

Read more about Railroad Safety Appliance Act:  Background, 1893 Act, Amendments, Case Law

Famous quotes containing the words railroad, safety, appliance and/or act:

    I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say—I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.
    Harriet Tubman (1821–1913)

    There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.
    Joseph Heller (b. 1923)

    Diseases desperate grown
    By desperate appliance are relieved,
    Or not at all.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)