Texting while driving a train is dangerous - So says the NTSB
The National Transportation Safety Board is reviewing a draft report on a train crash in California that killed the engineer and 24 others on Sept. 12, 2008.
The Los Angeles commuter train engineer who ran a red signal and hit an oncoming freight train while he was sending cellphone text messages in his cab, killing himself and 24 others, had passed two previous signals warning that he would have to stop ahead, a staff expert told the National Transportation Safety Board in a hearing here on Thursday.
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Source: Texting while driving a train is dangerous - So says the NTSB
The Los Angeles commuter train engineer who ran a red signal and hit an oncoming freight train while he was sending cellphone text messages in his cab, killing himself and 24 others, had passed two previous signals warning that he would have to stop ahead, a staff expert told the National Transportation Safety Board in a hearing here on Thursday.
Quote from the article:
| The commuter engineer, Robert Sanchez, who was among those killed, was supposed to notify a dispatcher by radio that he had seen signal indications. According to a tape of the radio transmissions, he had done so for several green signals and one yellow one, which warned that a stop was coming. But the recording did not capture him radioing that he had seen the last yellow signal or the final red signal, investigators said. “This engineer really did not have his head in the game,” said Deborah A.P. Hersman, the board chairwoman. The commuter and freight trains hit at a combined speed of 84 miles an hour, investigators said. The trains were visible to each other for only about five seconds before the impact; the engineer of the freight train applied the emergency brakes in the last two seconds, but the commuter engineer never did. The collision, on Sept. 12, 2008, occurred just north of the station in Chatsworth, Calif. The board is meeting to review a draft report on the incident from its staff, and to vote on the report and its recommendations. Mr. Sanchez worked a schedule of 6 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., and then 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., with a 70-mile commute from his home at the beginning and end of the day. But Rick Narvell, an expert for the board, said at the hearing that fatigue did not contribute to the crash. “Yes, I’m concerned about it,” he told the board members, “but the circumstances of this accident indicate we had a fellow here who was alert and texting.” The engineer sent or received 43 text messages on the day of the crash, including one 22 seconds before the crash, the board has previously said. Less than a month after the crash, Congress passed a law to require “positive train control” — a computer system that senses a train approaching a red signal at high speed and slows it down or stops it if an engineer disobeys the signal — by 2015. But the board, Ms. Hersman noted at the hearing, has been calling for this kind of system for years. “We would have liked to see positive train control implement sooner,” she said. “Sadly, it took this accident and 25 more lives and an act of Congress to move this technology from testing to reality.” |
Source: Texting while driving a train is dangerous - So says the NTSB
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