http://www.yourlawyer.com/topics/overview/railroad_accidents Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:42:24 -0800 pixel-app en http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/15133 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/15133 Los Angeles commuter train crash last Friday killed 25 people and injured 138.   Federal investigators are now on the scene of the grisly accident, trying to determine why the Metrolink train ran past stop signals and crashed head-on into an incoming freighter.  

The fatal Metrolink train crash occurred around 4:22 on Friday, near Chatsworth, California, at the west end of the San Fernando Valley.  Officials said 220 people were aboard the Metrolink train, which was heading from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to Ventura County.  The impact of the collision rammed the commuter train's  engine backward, jamming it deep into the first passenger car.  The Associated Press is reporting that the Metrolink train was so mangled that some bodies had to be removed in pieces.

The commuter train was traveling at 42 mph at the time of the crash.  Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Sunday that the Metrolink train failed to stop at the final red signal, which forced the train onto a track where the Union Pacific freight was traveling in the opposite direction.

"The Metrolink train went through the signal, did not observe the red signal and essentially forced open this section of the switch," member Kitty Higgins said Sunday night. "The switch bars were bent like a banana. It should be perfectly straight."

Higgins said that investigators have yet to determine  whether the signal was working properly.  However, she said that obeying signals on the track was the responsibility of the engineer driving the train.

The NTSB also said that investigators would be looking at the cell phone records of the train's engineer, who was killed in the collision.  A Los Angeles TV station has reported that two 14-year-old boys had received a text message from the engineer in the moments before the crash.  The boys' cell phone records are also being sought by the NTSB.

According to Metrolink, one of its dispatchers tried to warn the commuter train that it was heading for a crash with the freight train, but by the time the conductor on the Metrolink got the message, the collision had already occurred.  However, the NTSB reported an alternative version of events, saying that the Metrolink conductor called in the crash before the dispatcher could issue the warning.

Higgins also said that audio recordings from the commuter train indicate a period of silence as it passed the last two signals before the fiery wreck, a time when the engineer and the conductor should have been going through verbal safety checks.

Friday's LA train crash was the deadliest since Amtrak's Sunset Limited plunged off a trestle into a bayou near Mobile, Ala., in September 1993.  Forty-seven people were killed in that crash.

]]> http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/12344 Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/12344
According to FRA, human factor errors are responsible for nearly 40 percent of all train accidents over the past 5 years. An FRA evaluation of the research findings confirms that fatigue plays a role in approximately one out of four of those accidents, the agency said.

"In almost every other category of train accidents, we've seen a steady decline in recent years, but human-factor-caused accidents are increasing," FRA Administrator Joseph Boardman said. "Widespread acceptance by the railroad industry of the validated findings of this fatigue report could potentially lead to fewer serious train accidents."

Boardman noted that the goal of the research was to determine if a fatigue model can accurately and reliably predict an increased risk of human error that could contribute to the occurrence of a train accident.

A mathematical model for detecting the point at which the risk of fatigue becomes hazardous could be part of a railroad's fatigue management plan. FRA expects that this information will aid the railroad industry in improving crew scheduling practices in order to reduce that risk. A similar approach currently is utilized by the Department of Defense.

Study Analyzed 1,400 Train Accidents

As part of the study, researchers analyzed the 30-day work-schedule histories of locomotive crews preceding approximately 1,400 train accidents and found a strong statistical correlation between the crew's estimated level of alertness and the likelihood that they would be involved in an accident caused by human factors, FRA said.

The relationship, FRA noted, is so strong that the level of fatigue associated with some work schedules was found to be equivalent to being awake for 21 hours following an 8-hour sleep period the previous night. At this level, train accidents consistent with fatigue, such as failing to stop for red signals, were more likely to occur.

Boardman added that this fatigue study is an important part of the FRA's National Rail Safety Action Plan, a comprehensive effort to target the major causes of railroad incidents.

The report, titled "Validation and Calibration of a Fatigue Assessment Tool for Railroad Work Schedules, Summary Report," as well as a supplemental agency evaluation, can be found http://www.fra.dot.gov.
]]> http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/12280 Mon, 20 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/12280
The derailment occurred shortly before 2 a.m. as the train was passing over a switch less than a mile south of the old Everett train station. Repair crews expected to reopen one set of tracks by 1 a.m. Tuesday and the other later that day, Burlington Northern Santa Fe spokesman Gus Melonas said.

No one was injured, no hazardous materials or toxic substances were involved and there was no risk of pollution, Melonas said. The cause remained under investigation but train handling was ruled out, he added.

The first of the 10 cars to go off the tracks was 19 cars behind the four engines pulling the 89-car train, he said. One car was partly in Puget Sound, four were on their sides, two were tilting and three were upright. All were carrying lumber, veneerboard, particleboard or wood pulp.

Geoff Patrick of Sound Transit said the derailment blocked commuter service Monday morning and evening between Everett and Seattle. Amtrak passenger trains also were blocked, Melonas said.

He said some eastbound freight trains were being detoured through the Columbia River Gorge.]]> http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/12251 Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/12251
The bodies of two crew members were recovered Friday from the smoldering wreckage of Thursday's derailment, which spilled thousands of gallons of fuel near a thick forest and sparked a large fire. Eight other crew members aboard the train, which was carrying rail equipment, suffered minor injuries.

Survivors told authorities that the men who died had been trying to apply the brakes when the train ran off the tracks in a ravine about 60 miles east of Sacramento.

The emergency brakes slowed the locomotive only slightly before the train's supervisor in a final, desperate move threw it into reverse, said Dave Watson, lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.

The train kept rolling and gathering speed, eventually hitting a curve at about 50 mph twice the recommended speed for that stretch of tracks.

"This was a runaway train," said Watson, who spent Friday interviewing crew members.

"They were pretty much shook up. They were heart-broke," he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Watson said the stretch of track leading to the crash site is one of the steepest in the country, running straight before it curves where six of the train's 10 cars derailed.

Investigators have come close to ruling out the possibility of faulty tracks at the crash site, he said. The agency is focusing instead on the speed of the train.

Investigators on Sunday planned to comb through two locomotives and two other cars from the accident to find the train's events recorder, similar to an airplane's black box.

Sheriff's Lt. Chal DeCecco, spokesman for the agencies at the scene, said crew members told investigators the train was passing through a tunnel when they noticed something amiss and tried to slow down about three miles before the crash site.

DeCecco said it would take until Monday to positively identify the victims. One body was recovered from a burned-out train car, while the other was underneath the tangle of fire-charred steel.

"It's just a tragedy," said Ken Julian, spokesman for Harsco Track Technologies, the South Carolina-based contractor that employed the victims and all but one of the other crew members. "We're going to do everything we can to support the families and get to the bottom of the cause."

Harsco owns the train, which was transporting a piece of maintenance equipment called a grinding machine under a contract with the Union Pacific Railroad. The lone Union Pacific employee aboard the train was the conductor.

The train's purpose is to smooth worn-down sections of track. It was likened to a "rolling mechanic's shop," with a tanker carrying diesel fuel for the locomotive and the other rail cars carrying equipment and drums filled with an assortment of fuels and fluids.

Crews were clearing the tracks Friday, and the railroad hoped to restore full service on the busy east-west corridor over the weekend. A 600-foot section of track will have to be replaced, Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said.

Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Department of Fish and Game also were on the scene, trying to keep spilled fuel from running into a tributary of the north fork of the American River.]]> http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/9514 Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/9514
Ten people have died this year at railroad crossings in Louisiana on pace to tie a state record set in the 1960s and the state is routinely among the top five states in the nation in such wrecks, according to Operation Lifesaver, a group that tracks the accidents nationwide.

In 2003, Louisiana had 128 train crossing wrecks and led all states with 3.68 accidents per 100 crossings, the group said.

Louisiana has 3,017 points where roadways cross rail lines on public property and 500 should be closed, said Johnny Bradbury, head of the state Department of Transportation and Development.

Parish and city governments have the power to close them but are often reluctant because residents like the convenience. James Champagne, head of the state Highway Safety Commission, said local leaders need to see past such arguments and close up to 1,500 of the crossings statewide to prevent more deaths.

"We need to get past that attitude about convenience," Champagne said.

Champagne, Bradbury and Gov. Kathleen Blanco spoke at a meeting of government and industry officials called to find ways to reduce the number of the accidents.

Bradbury said he was considering seeking legislation that would give the state the power to close crossings that are on parish or city property.

Blanco said she wanted the rail industry to double the amount it pays to put safety equipment at the crossings. Rail companies now pays 5 percent of the cost to put up and upgrade the flashing lights, gates and other apparatus that inform motorists that a train is approaching a crossing. Federal and state government money pays the rest.

Blanco said she wanted the industry to up its contribution to 10 percent, the same as it pays in Mississippi.

"It seems we have an epidemic" of railway deaths, Blanco said, adding that her own grandfather was killed in such an accident in Iberia Parish.

It costs about $150,000 on average to equip a crossing with the safety materials, said Carmack M. Blackmon, a lawyer and lobbyist for the railway industry. The amount of government money available means about 35 of Louisiana's crossings can be equipped per year, he said.

Blackmon said the industry would probably agree to the 10 percent figure.

However, crossings equipped with the safety measures are not much safer than those without them, according to transportation department statistics.

About 43 percent of vehicle accidents with trains happen at crossings with the equipment, because people ignore them or drive around them, agency spokesman Mark Lambert said.

Champagne said the crossings should be equipped anyway, because the equipment is effective in other states. Louisiana's drivers will eventually learn to obey them, he said.

And Federal Railroad Administration research has found that crossings with such equipment are 75 percent less likely to have accidents than those without them.

The reason so many accidents happen at safety-equipped crossings is that those spots are more dangerous or have more traffic, said Ronald E. Ries, a staff director with the agency.

Champagne said the most people killed in one year in Louisiana railway collisions was about 30, in the 1960s.]]> http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/9556 Sun, 13 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/9556
Crossing deaths had been falling steadily in recent years. But last year, 369 people died at rail crossings, with three of the four major freight railroads reporting a rise in deaths, federal figures show. Norfolk Southern registered a 50 percent increase, the most of any major railroad, with 60 deaths. More people, 77, died at crossings owned by Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad.

California had the most grade crossing deaths last year, 34, followed by Texas, Illinois, Indiana and Louisiana.

In all, more than 3,000 accidents occurred at grade crossings last year about one every three hours. Some rail-safety experts say the new figures support their view that the railroads and the government are not doing enough to make grade crossings safer.

"I find that disconcerting, because we had a history of slow but steady decline of grade crossing fatalities over the years," said George Gavalla, a former top safety official with the Federal Railroad Administration. "We worked hard to encourage railroads to invest in crossing safety programs, and looking at these statistics, I wonder if that level of investment was being maintained."

Federal transportation officials declined to respond specifically to questions about the failure to achieve their 10-year goal.

Tom White, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, a trade group for the large freight rail companies, said, "We very much regret the increase, and we wish it had not occurred." But the rail association and the Federal Railroad Administration said the rise in deaths needed to be viewed in the context of heavier rail traffic last year.

White said the railroad association was "committed to working with all of the authorities to bring those numbers down." One way to do that is through more driver education, White said.

But Harvey Levine, a former vice president of the railroad association who is an advocate for rail crash victims, said railroads should examine their own conduct. Levine said his study of rail crossings in Ohio found that many had sight obstructions that made it difficult for drivers to see approaching trains.

Last summer, after The New York Times reported on grade crossing hazards, Union Pacific said it would improve the way it reported accidents, monitored warning signals at crossings and collected evidence from crossing accidents.

Last Monday, the New York state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, said another railroad, CSX, had agreed to pay a $1 million fine to settle state charges that it failed to report properly and fix promptly hundreds of warning-signal malfunctions at grade crossings across the state.

Spitzer said his investigation found that CSX sometimes took months to fix broken warning signals. As part of its settlement with the state, CSX agreed to fix signals more quickly.

Deaths at CSX crossings last year also rose to 58 from 52 the previous year. Gary Sease, a CSX spokesman, said his company would try to reduce deaths by cutting vegetation around crossings, by closing more rail crossings, and with programs to educate drivers. Though more people died at CSX crossings, Sease said, the overall number of accidents declined.]]> http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/9516 Mon, 07 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/9516
Under a $1.5 million agreement announced this morning by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, CSX will change the way it monitors crossings and reports accidents.

The Florida-based company will also pay for a $500 pilot program that would reimburse local police for their costs in protecting railroad crossings where safety equipment is malfunctioning.

The agreement ends a year-long investigation that began when John and Jean O'Connor were killed by a CSX freight train as they drove through a rail crossing in suburban Rochester in February 2004.

Just last week, the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department wrapped up its investigation of a similar incident where a Johnstown woman was killed.

In that case investigators said the conductor of a CSX train flipped a switch to override the safety gates while his train was stopped on the tracks.

A short time later a train coming in the opposite direction tried to activate the gates, but couldn't. Victoria Doyle, 38, was killed as she tried to drive across the tracks. So far no criminal charges have been filed.

CSX maintains 550 rail crossings with signals along nearly 1,300 miles of track statewide.]]> http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/9548 Sat, 05 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/9548
Bulnes' father, also named Michael Bulnes, is suing Caltrain, the commuter rail that runs between San Francisco and San Jose, for negligence leading to his son's death. He claims that his son's foot was stuck in a pothole next to the track and that he could have avoided being hit had the problem been fixed.

"I was shocked," Bulnes' attorney said on the defense attorney's decision to agree to those facts.

Caltrain's attorney, Eugene Brown Jr., declined to comment.

The revelation came following opening statements from both attorneys in a jury trial expected to last at least 15 court days. During his opening speech, O'Reilly attempted to present a scenario of Bulnes' last hours that culminated with the 16-year-old breaking his leg in the pothole, moments before being struck by a train. He said he would present testimony from two doctors to prove this.

he family attorney Tshowed the jury several photos taken around the time of the accident showing decaying asphalt around the tracks where Bulnes was killed.

"He had ample time to clear the tracks had his foot not been trapped by something in order to break it the way it did," O'Reilly said.

But Caltrain's attorney argued that the condition of the road at the time was not relevant to the case.]]> http://www.yourlawyer.com/topics/overview/railroad_accidents Sat, 05 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.yourlawyer.com/topics/overview/railroad_accidents Railroad Accidents The railroad industry and its supervisor, the Federal Railroad Administration, have long maintained that signal malfunctions pose little danger and that accidents caused by them are extremely uncommon. A New York Times computer analysis of government records found that from 1999 through 2003, there were at least 400 grade-crossing accidents in which signals either did not activate or were alleged to have malfunctioned. At least 45 people were killed and 130 injured. Federal rules require that railroads maintain signals on tracks they own, but quite often railroad crossing malfunctions go uncorrected.

The frequency of signal malfunctions is difficult to assess, because railroads do not have to report all malfunctions and because proving that an error occurred is often difficult after an incident. Based upon government data, some 9,500 calls about signals were lodged in 2003 in Texas alone. Chronic signal malfunctions are not only hazardous, but also burdensome for police departments, especially smaller ones, because they must often send officers to safeguard motorists at problem crossings.

Peggy Wilhide, a spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, played down the significance of signal malfunctions, saying a recent federal report found that the great majority of crossing accidents were caused by unsafe drivers. Ms. Wilhide also stressed that most of the reports of signal malfunctions could not be confirmed. In some cases, records show, railroad workers have accidentally detached the warning system or disabled signals during maintenance without providing alternate ways to warn drivers.

The latter issue was the subject of a 2002 agency advisory. Of the grade-crossing accidents in the New York Times study, nearly 17% involved rail maintenance or inspection equipment that, according to the rail industry is not designed to activate the warning signals.

In the summer of 2002, 27 short signals on the Canadian National tracks in Illinois were reported to the federal database. Some signals were short by only a second or two, but most reports did not specify the length of time. Records show that after the malfunctions were discovered, Canadian National temporarily lowered the allowable train speed for all railroads using the affected tracks. The railroad administration said the problems "were primarily related to deposits from freight spillage that caused a buildup of material on the rail surface."

If you or a loved have been injured in a railroad accident, please fill out the form at the right for a free case evaluation by a qualified personal injury attorney.]]>