Wayside detector devices, over the years, have proven to be valuable assets to a railroad in enhancing safety and improving efficiencies. Currently, devices such as hot box detectors, dragging equipment detectors, high car detectors, wheel impact detectors have routinely prevented accidents or damages from occurring. Some of the detectors were invented in the past out of despration. For instance, bearings in distress are impossible to detect from visual inspection of the trains. Certain outside defects such as loose or broken backing rings or end caps are readily seen. Other defects such as internal brinelling or spalling will be completely invisible to the car inspectors. Therefore, hot box detectors which use infra-red detection technology were installed to substantially aid to detect defective bearings. While these detectors are not perfect in the sense they occasionally give false alarms and the spacings are such that there is still a chance a bearing can get hot and burnt-off in between two detectors, a lot of burnt-off's potentially causing millions of dollars in accident cost were prevented over the years, because of existence of these detectors.
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