Maryland Injury and Disability Law : Washington DC Metro Injury & Disability Lawyer & Attorney : Greenberg & Bederman : Accidents, Falls, Medical Malpractice : Maryland, DC, Virginia

What makes this metro accident even worse is that this isn’t the first time that DC metro maintenance workers have been killed on the tracks. In November of 2006, two Metro employees were killed on the Yellow Line when the driver of an empty four car train didn’t use appropriate emergency braking methods.

It isn’t just DC Metro employees whose safety is at risk. Everyday passengers are in danger as well. In January of 2007, a Green Line train jumped the tracks at the Mount Vernon Square Station. This accident fortunately only injured 18 people, but it was this metro accident that began to reveal the trend of poor maintenance standards and poor training, and not just with the rail transit. Eight days later, on February 1^st of 2007, an electrical short at the Farragut North station caused a fire on the tracks which shut down Metro traffic for an hour and a half. To underscore how badly in need of repair the DC Metro system is, this fire on February 1^st was actually the second fire in as many days.

Then there was a period of a month and a half where five people were struck by different busses, and four of them were killed. On January 16^th a woman was hit and killed by a Metrobus in Mt. Pleasant. On February 14, Martha Schoenborn and Sally Dean McGhee had the right of way on Pennsylvania Avenue NW when they were both struck and killed by a bus that made an illegal turn at a red light.  Four days later, a woman was struck and killed by a bus on Congress Street by the Congress Heights Metro Station.  A mere six days after that, a bus hit a three year old in a stroller in Southwest D.C. Miraculously, the child was treated at a hospital and released.

There were two separate occasions where trains collided on the tracks in 2009. The first was the absolutely horrific Red Line Crash in June, where nine people died and seventy people were injured. And there was another crash in November, where two cars collided in the West Falls Church train yard, but fortunately no passengers were aboard the train. There were some minor injuries to the cleaning staff, unfortunately.

With all these latest deaths, it is obvious that our transit system is not safe.  If the Silver Spring line is extended out to Dulles Airport, we have to consider that this new project should be delayed until the major dc metro transit safety concerns that exist are sorted out. The NTSB determined that the Red Line crash was caused by a system failure. These failures need to be fixed immediately. The rash of bus fatalities in 2007 were reportedly caused by a lack of training and improper supervision. Have these issues been addressed?

Accidents like these cannot continue to be repeated. WMATA management has an obligation to make sure that the drivers are well trained and properly supervised. They also have an obligation to make sure that all of the trains and sensor equipment are working properly. But apparently they have not been doing so.

We know this not only by the NTSB report of the Red Line crash, but also from the concerns of David Garrard, one of the two workers who were killed on Tuesday:

Grace Garrard, a 49-year-old substitute teacher, said her husband was so careful when he was on the tracks that the truck that backed up and hit him "must have come out of nowhere." He had told her repeatedly in the past year that he was nervous that the aging transit system was not getting enough attention from Metro.

"We need to spend the money on upkeep, and they weren't doing that enough, and that bothered him," Grace Garrard said. "They weren't repairing the old stuff."

The offices of Greenberg and Bederman are located one half block from theSilver Spring metro station, and one mile from the Washington DC line. We are currently representing the injured in that horrific dc metro train crash that happened in June,2009.

If you or a loved one has been injured by a bus or Metro train, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free accident injurylegal consultation today.

While it is impossible to claim that these agencies are toothless, you have to wonder what the end result would have been if inspectors at FEMA were able to demand that the levies in New Orleans were reinforced prior to Hurricane Katrina, or if investigators at the SEC were able to look closely into Madoff’s methods before the whole scheme collapsed.

Recently, the Washington, D.C. area has gotten to know a government agency that didn’t necessarily come in too late, but since this agency has no power to enforce the implementation of needed improvements and repairs, it might as well have never shown up at all.

The National Traffic and Safety Board recently came to town to dissect the wreckage of the Red Line Metro crash that occurred on June 23^rd. This wasn’t the first time that the NTSB has had dealings with our dc metro train transit system. The NTSB had issued multiple warnings and recommendations over the years to metro, but since the NTSB has no authority to make sure that these warnings are heeded and these recommendations are implemented, the warnings and recommendations were, for the most part, completely ignored. DC Metro train accident (WMATA) authorities claimed that they didn’t have the money to implement the recommendations of the NTSB, so the Red Line trains simply continued to move along in the same dangerous fashion.

In the aftermath of the dc metro train accident on June 22nd, in which nine people died and eighty were injured, two things happened of note. The first was that Metro announced that they would be spending $177 million beginning next year in order to overhaul the Red Line. While we think that’s certainly admirable, we have to wonder where that money for improvement was when the NTSB was issuing multiple warnings and recommendations years ago.

The second event of importance happened today, which is that the NTSB issued its initial urgent safety recommendations. Among the findings in the initial report, it was discovered that the striking train in the dc metro train accident was not equipped with any recorders that would have detailed the speed of the car, nor was there any communication between the train operators or the Metrorail Operations Control Center.

The report also says that the circuit that was supposed to prevent the very accident that occurred failed on an intermittent basis. The circuit in question did not notice that a train had stopped where it had, and so the operator of the striking train had no idea that there was any danger ahead. To her, it was the same route that she had driven hundreds of times before.

The NTSB goes on to recommend the following actions be taken within thirty days:

“Take action to enhance the safety redundancy of your train control system by evaluating track occupancy data on a real time basis in order to detect losses in track occupancy and automatically generate alerts.”

In other words, the current track sensor system in place is not only antiquated, but there is also apparently a delay between the information getting from the sensor to the Metro Operations Control Center to the driver of the train that triggered the sensor in the first place. We live in an era where a text message can be sent instantly from here in Washington, D.C. to Sydney, Australia. Surely our transit system could figure out a way to get information to the drivers faster.

The report also recommends the obvious:

“Alerts should prompt actions that include immediately stopping train movements or implementing appropriate speed restrictions to prevent collisions.”

If the $177 million being spent on the renovation of the Red Line does not include the implementation of some method of automatically stopping a train when it is danger of a collision, then this would be a complete travesty. And we don’t necessarily think that scenario is entirely far-fetched. Remember, for all the weight that the NTSB might appear to have, their recommendations are only that as far as the law is concerned. WMATA is under no obligation to follow the recommendations of the NTSB at all. At this point, the only thing keeping WMATA interested in fixing their mistakes is the fact that something has already gone dreadfully wrong.

The Washington, D.C. injury lawyers at Greenberg and Bederman are currently providing legal representation for victims of the Red Line dc metro train crash, as well as providing legal representation to injury victims of any sort. If you or a loved one has been injured in the dc metro train  accident, or any accident contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.