Washington Metro Commuter Teach Incident Raises Questions of Passenger Security

The Washington Metropolitan Location Transit Authority (WMATA) is a tri-jurisdictional governing administration agency that operates teach and bus transit products and services. The Metro, as it is called, is funded by the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Maryland.

Nine people were killed and several much more travellers had been hurt when two Washington Metro subway trains collided on June 21, 2009, Monday afternoon in Washington, D.C.  1 commuter, recognized as Metro train 112, crashed into the again of another stationary commuter on the Metropolitan Space Transit Authority’s Pink line concerning the Takoma and Fort Totten Metrorail stations. The National Transportation Security board (NHTSA) is investigating but won’t most likely have a report on what induced the collision for lots of months. Right here is what we do know.

Metro coach 112 was the oldest in the fleet and was sent to Metro someday amongst 1975 to 1978.  The subject matter coach was being operated by an personnel with 3 or so months of knowledge.  Nonetheless, Metro 112 was normally controlled by a pc as opposed to the operator, unless the teach was in a guide mode. It is being documented that Metro 112 was in “automated method” at the time of collision indicating that the laptop was functioning the teach, not the prepare operator on board.  It is also remaining described that the emergency brake on educate 112 experienced been depressed, which could indicate that the teach operator attempted to manually cease the educate to keep away from collision.  The lever could have, nonetheless, been pressured forward by system make contact with or other speak to. The NTSB has also verified that Metro 112 was two months overdue for scheduled brake maintenance.

The other piece of data our lawyers are concentrating on is that federal officials had advised that educate 112 should really have been changed simply because of issues about its age. Security watchdogs warned Washington’s metro operators 3 several years ago about weaknesses in aging subway cars like practice 112 on troubles of crashworthiness. The NTSB has also reported that it told Washington Metro in 2006 that the carriage in its 1000-series trains, like prepare 112,  was likely to unreasonably crumple in an collision jeopardizing the safety of travellers and crew.

Evidently, the investigation is presently centered on the onboard pcs that manage the trains speed and braking, the Metro track sign program which was specially intended to prevent collisions this sort of as this a single, and on the age of train 112, a single of about 300 1000-collection. We will not likely know for months what the cause, or numerous will cause, of this fatal commuter practice incident have been.  Having said that, it is now distinct that this accident could have been averted.  The security techniques and techniques are made to preclude and accident like this from at any time taking place.  Anything evidently went incorrect. Remember it was only 8 months ago that another commuter educate in Los Angles California claimed the lives of 20 passengers.  The operator in that occasion was running a mobile cellular phone at the time of the collision.