alt Hacker Newswithout situational awareness, there is no good default behavior for a simple dead man handle on a hundreds ton train.
These days though i wonder why we don't have [semi-]autonomous control there. At least for emergency stop when the end of rails is 100 feet away and your speed is 20mph - any new car have such features today.
At the very least, if political opposition is a problem, they could have a very loud noise played to the conductor if they're due to stop and haven't yet.