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

You might be asking yourself if this is the accumulation of years of drivecam video footage, considering how many incidents there are. In fact, these are just the noteworthy clips from July to August of 2011. That’s two months with over 150 “incidents.”

We have talked about the various problems with the public transportation available in the D.C. area. Chiefly, we talk about Metro. There are all sorts of smaller public transportation systems available in Maryland and Virginia, but none of them even proportionately come close to having the appalling safety record that exists with the bus system in Metro. It isn’t exactly a secret that there are many bus accidents in D.C. WMATA apparently aren’t very good at getting them off the road and out of the system. For instance, here is a list of the offenses and “punishments” of a particularly bad Metro bus driver: (Bear in mind, the following list falls under “alleged,” but the sources at this website are usually quite reliable.)

• Hired as a bus driver and is involved in an accident
• Gets "fired"
• Gets reinstated as a bus driver
• Gets "fired" again for another accident
• Gets transferred to become a TRAIN OPERATOR! (Safety first)
• Accumulates enough infractions (wrong side doors, platform overshoots, running signals) to be disqualified from ever being a train operator again
• Becomes the face of Metro as a station manager and as such:
• Gets a 5-day suspension for disrespecting a Metro Police Officer
• Gets a 5-day suspension for using a cell phone while on duty
• Gets a 5-day suspension for regularly taking 2-3 hour lunch breaks
• Gets a 10-day suspension for locking someone in the station after closing (This was overturned because Metro lost, or couldn't find, the film from the video cameras at the station.)
• Gets a 12-day suspension for falling asleep on the job after his picture was posted on this blog. (He apparently successfully fought that punishment off after going to the doctor and afterward claiming he had sleep apnea. The other station manager pictured claimed the same thing and got off as well, the source said.)
• But none of that mattered because he took several months of disability leave after "spraining" his ankle.

Again, this is an alleged list. But if it is true, it is absolutely appalling.

Getting hit by a car is bad. Getting hit by a bus is infinitely worse. A city bus is an enormous, and it carries a lot more weight and momentum than even the largest of SUV’s. A bus that is only traveling at a few miles an hour is capable of doing enormous damage to a human being. We know that, so it goes without saying that WMATA officials know that as well. Why it is they continue to allow unsafe operators to arrive in the system is beyond us. We can only hope they get their act together before more people get hurt or worse.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident law firm. We offer legal counsel to those who have been injured by being hit by a car, truck or city bus. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. has been hurt by public transportation due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today. 

There are multiple questions that need to be answered. The first to ask is what is wrong with the friction discs? Is this a problem on that particular car only? Is it a system wide problem?

Next we need to ask about the standards of communication. While we know that the Metro trains move very fast, they certainly can’t move faster than a telephone call. Why wasn’t the dispatcher told about the obstruction on the track? Why wasn’t the driver of the Orange Line train told about the obstruction in front of him and his train full of passengers? The driver of the Blue Line train must have known that leaving something on the track was a possibility. There were apparently sparks flying from the side of the train. The only two options that can be considered here are that there was a communication breakdown between the Blue Line train, the dispatcher and the Orange Line train, or that there simply is no communication possible between the three parties. And if there is no communication possible, then why isn’t there?

If you want to know how Metro has performed over the years, the list of incidents is not pretty. There was a terrible crash that killed 9 people and injured countless more; there have been fires on the tracks, there have been random beatings where no police or security made an effort to help the victim, there have been escalator collapses, and now the brakes are falling off the trains.

Public transit is not supposed to be a risky proposition. You shouldn’t be putting your safety at risk when you get on the Metro, or even when you enter the facility and get on the escalator. Yet this is what Washingtonians do in the hundreds of thousands on a daily basis. We ride the Metro. It’s a risky proposition.

We’ve gone into this countless times, and yet will continue to keep bringing it up, as long as there continues to be dangerous failures with Metro.

Greenberg and Bederman is an accident law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has been injured due to the carelessness or negligence of someone else, and that includes those who have been injured on the Metro. If you or a loved one in Northern Virgina, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been hurt in an accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

This means that if you ride a Metro bus to and from work every day, you have a two out of seven chance of being involved in an “incident.” Those odds are terrible for any sort of transportation, much less a public bus service. To be fair, most of these “incidents” are either fender benders or situations where the bus hits a curb or other object that isn’t a person or a car. About 3% of these accidents end up causing injuries, while the rest mainly cause inconvenience and damages to properties both public and private. But one thing that concerns us is that Metro itself says that their drivers could have prevented about 41% of these accidents. Is this a statement on a lack of training for bus drivers? Or is it perhaps a reflection on the relative inexperience of so many of Metro’s bus operators? About 28% of Metro’s bus drivers have been on the job for less than five years.

We aren’t laboring under the delusion that Metro should have a completely spotless record when it comes to car accidents or car crashes in the D.C. area. But 6.8 crashes a day seems like the sort of number you would get for transit in Guadalajara or rural China.

The main point of public transit is to allow those who don’t own their own cars to get from one point or another, but another point is for this to occur in as safe a manner as possible. You shouldn’t be putting your safety at risk when you get on the bus or the subway, yet it seems that is what everybody who rides the bus in D.C, Maryland or northern Virginia is doing.

If you consider that the infrastructure of our subway system is also in particularly dire straits, then we are having a hard time recommending the use of our transit system at all. Let’s consider the following scenario: Say you have to commute from Arlington, Virginia to Bethesda, Maryland every day. Every morning you take the 7A bus from North Fairlington to the Pentagon. That puts you at risk of what Metro calls “an incident.” If you manage to get to the Pentagon, then you would take the escalator that might be working or might not be working down to the platform, where you would wait for the Yellow Line train. The Yellow Line train will move along at a high rate of speed on a track where the sensors are in dire need of replacement and the tracks are prone to catch on fire. You will take the Yellow Line to Gallery Place, and then transfer to the Red Line, again using escalators that might be running or might not be, and are also prone to the occasional brake failure and collapse. You would follow the Red Line all the way to Bethesda, where you would exit the station via the longest escalator in the western hemisphere, which is presumably held to the same standards of maintenance and care as the rest of the escalators in the Metro subway system.

Now that you have that information, doesn’t the daily commute seem a lot less mundane? The problem is that the daily commute is supposed to be mundane. It isn’t supposed to be a scenario where you are white-knuckling it from one end to the other. It should be up to everyone who utilizes our public transportation system to remind the people who operate and maintain it of that fact. Please contact WMATA and urge them to tighten up the standards for the bus drivers, repair the escalators and upgrade the sensors on the tracks.

If you or a loved one has been hurt in a transit accident on the Metro, Metro buses or any other bus system in Northern Virginia, Maryland or D.C, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

We were hoping the next replacement will be at L’Enfant Plaza, where what is about the worst case scenario for an escalator failure actually did happen on Halloween of 2010. Right after Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity (which was one of the biggest crowds the National Mall has seen in years,) the brakes on the escalator that leads down into the station failed, causing a pile up of humanity at the mouth of the station. Four people were seriously hurt. You can see the video here.

The next new escalators scheduled for installation are three at Foggy Bottom, three at DuPont Circle and three at the Pentagon. The rest will be going into what WMATA is calling “a major rehab.”

While we completely understand replacing the escalators at the South exit of DuPont (a collapse there would be a monumental disaster,) we are having a hard time understanding why the escalators at L’Enfant aren’t being considered a priority. If there is a total brake failure on an escalator, it would seem that replacing the entire escalator would be a priority. Plus, L’Enfant Plaza is a very high traffic Metro station, at least as equally high traffic as Foggy Bottom. But at this point, we have given up trying to figure out Metro. We just cross our fingers and hope for the best. And replacing some escalators is a good start.

However, we are worried about how this escalator refurbishment will take place. According to the article in The Washington Post, all of the escalators in the Metro system were made by seven different companies, four of whom are currently out of business. And the quote from Deputy General Manager Dave Kubicek makes us somewhat nervous:

“Vendors couldn’t service what was in there. No matter what we did, we weren’t going to be able to service them to the level of expectations.”

Further disturbing bits of information appear shortly below that particular quote:

“Metro used to contract out its service and maintenance of escalators and elevators but brought these back in house in spring 2010. If parts can’t be found on the market, Metro makes them or takes ones from elevators no longer in service.”

So basically, it appears as if in the interest of saving money, Metro brought the escalator maintenance in house, despite not having people with the skills to do the work or the resources to get new parts. They then resorted to cannibalization of no longer existing escalators and elevators, which makes about as much sense as saying, “Hey, why don’t we use the plug from this leak and move it over to the new leak? What could possibly go wrong?”

A great deal can go wrong, apparently. This is the sort of thing that you would expect from a subway system in a third world country, but not Washington, D.C. We urge WMATA to get moving on fixing or replacing all of these escalators before somebody gets hurt.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance for those who have been injured due to no fault of their own, and that includes injuries due to falls. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

The District of Columbia subway system was built on what was essentially a swamp. It is not exactly the firmest of ground. While they were building the Washington Monument back in the 19^th century, the structure started to sink and tilt until they extended the foundation to around 37 feet. If they had kept the original foundation, the Monument would look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

It is for this reason that the subway tracks are much deeper here than in New York. There are places in Washington and Maryland where the tracks would have been unsupportable if they weren’t positioned deep underground. So when people have to walk up the escalator at DuPont Circle, they have to walk up 319 steps, which span 188 feet. And Bethesda is known for having the longest escalator in the entire western hemisphere, which spans 475 feet. To put that into context, it’s actually longer than the staircase that leads to the interior of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. And while none of the other stations have escalators that are longer than Bethesda’s, many of them are still pretty long.

Now, how many of you would like to climb up broken escalators like that, particularly when the temperature is 100 degrees outside? If any of you rode the Metro on June 1^st, you probably had to walk, whether you wanted to or not.

From the June 1^st edition of the Washington Examiner:

“One out of every five Metro escalators was out of service Wednesday, leaving riders hiking up and down what should have been moving staircases as temperatures soared into the mid-90s…As of 9:40 a.m., 126 of the agency's 588 escalators were out of commission. But that number wasn't an anomaly. On Monday, it was 113 at one point. Last Wednesday it hit 110.”

You should remember that public transportation is for everyone, not just young, fit people who can make a trip up a staircase like that with no problems. It is also for the elderly, and for people with injuries, and for travelers and shoppers who are encumbered with luggage and groceries. Forcing them to trudge up and down lengthy flights of stairs due to negligence of the system goes directly against the spirit of what a public service is supposed to be about.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal help to people who have been injured due to no fault of their own, and that includes people who have been injured due to the negligence of public transit officials and employees. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. has been injured due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free personal injury case evaluation.

It also would have gutted WMATA’s ability to make the changes and upgrades that the National Transportation Safety Board has been recommending for years, particularly so after the Red Line crash in 2009 that killed nine people and injured seventy six. It would have been fairly galling to have one element of the federal government recommend much needed improvements and then remove our ability to pay for them.

The DC Metro system needs new subway cars, and it absolutely needs to revamp the sensors that were the primary mechanical cause of the fatal train crash. It also needs to revamp the culture. The NTSB report also mentioned that there were multiple human factors involved in the crash, all of them stemming from an unfortunate institution-wide notion that passing the buck is how things get accomplished.

These are only two of Metro’s immediate needs. There are certainly other things that WMATA could put some of that $300 million towards. The first would be the escalators, and the second would be security.

There has been one high profile escalator failure at a Metro station in the past year. By “high profile,” we mean failures that result in people getting hurt. This failure happened at L’Enfant Plaza, on the same day as an enormous rally at the National Mall. Miraculously, only four people were hurt, which seems amazing when you watch the video. There was also an incident at Foggy Bottom where the last four steps on one of the escalators suddenly dropped through the bottom of the stair case, leaving a big hole that a woman fell in to. Again, fortunately, she was able to get pulled out before she got hurt. And just last month, there was another failure at DuPont Circle, where the escalator suddenly stopped, which caused people to fall. In case you didn’t know, the escalators at DuPont Circle’s north entrance are 188 feet long. While it is fortunate that nobody was seriously hurt, it would seem to be only a matter of time before there is a serious injury.

The obvious malfunctions are bad, but there are also the problems with keeping these escalators running in general. At any given time, multiple escalators aren’t working, which causes people to have to walk up and down the stairs. Would you like to walk up 188 feet, particularly during the summer months? And, how does this affect the disabled? The escalators don’t work for multiple reasons, chief among them being that WMATA does not have an adequately trained maintenance staff. This is another area where some of that $300 million could be used.

With regards to security, there have been multiple instances of violent crime taking place on our subway system. We aren’t talking about on occasional mugging. We mean multiple instances of random and severe beatings of innocent passengers. The police presence on the trains and in the stations has been severely lacking, and there have been extremely disturbing accounts of Metro personnel not even lifting a finger to help people who are being attacked right before their eyes.

We believe that operating costs will take up a fairly substantial amount of this money, but surely somebody over at Metro is aware of the multiple safety problems that exist on our subway system. These aren’t the sort of problems that you can simply ignore, because at this rate, it’s simply a matter of time before we have another serious crash, or an escalator breakdown that results in a death, or a crime that escalates into a murder. The safety of our public transportation system should be a priority.

Greenberg and Bederman is apersonal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured on our public transit system due to no fault of their own. This includes escalator malfunctions, injuries due to sudden starts and stops, and instances of neglect by the WMATA Police. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured on the Metro, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

To add insult to extensive injury, the victim walked back in to the station and asked to use the phone to call the police and an ambulance. Station personnel would not let him use the phone, and instead gave him 50 cents to use the payphone. Your taxpayer dollars, hard at work.

Sad to say, this is not the only recent instance of violence on Metro premises. Back in August, a fight turned into a 70 person mini-riot at Gallery Place-Chinatown. In January, a 47 year old man was beaten severely by a group of teens, some of whom recorded the video, which was then placed on the internet. Suspects still have yet to be arrested. Plus there was the brawl between two teens that happened on the Orange line, with other teens encouraging the fight. Again, no arrests. No police presence.

There has also been an increase in the number of robberies and thefts that have taken place at stations and on the trains themselves. On December 23^rd, a group of young men stormed an Orange line train and robbed several passengers, delivering a few beatings along the way. A teenager was robbed at gunpoint and then stabbed on a Blue Line train in mid February. And the number of people who have had their iPod’s or other electronic devices stolen while on the Metro has spiked by about 40%.

We aren’t naïve enough to think that crime doesn’t exist. Nor are we naïve enough to think that the Metro Police can be everywhere at once. But the thing that we are noticing about many of these reports is not only the lack of police presence, but also the apparent indifference of other Metro personnel. We hear stories about employees who won’t even let victims of beating use the phone, or station attendants who watch beatings take place and do nothing to intervene, or calls on emergency phone boxes that aren’t answered. It’s getting to the point where a quasi-vigilante group like the Guardian Angels is starting to up its presence on Metro, because it appears that they have no faith in the official authorities’ ability to protect passengers.

If you combine this climate of fear with the antiquated sensor system and very real threat of crashes, as well as the crumbling infrastructure of the stations and escalators that have a tendency to suddenly stop working, the DC Metro system resembles not an urban transit system, but rather a large and elaborate game of Russian Roulette. It isn’t necessarily about getting from point A to point B anymore. Now it’s about taking your chances.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people who have been injured due to negligence on transit systems in the Washington, D.C. area. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. has been injured on the Metro or on any of the local transit systems due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

To add insult to extensive injury, the victim walked back in to the station and asked to use the phone to call the police and an ambulance. Station personnel would not let him use the phone, and instead gave him 50 cents to use the payphone. Your taxpayer dollars, hard at work.

Sad to say, this is not the only recent instance of violence on Metro premises. Back in August, a fight turned into a 70 person mini-riot at Gallery Place-Chinatown. In January, a 47 year old man was beaten severely by a group of teens, some of whom recorded the video, which was then placed on the internet. Suspects still have yet to be arrested. Plus there was the brawl between two teens that happened on the Orange line, with other teens encouraging the fight. Again, no arrests. No police presence.

There has also been an increase in the number of robberies and thefts that have taken place at stations and on the trains themselves. On December 23^rd, a group of young men stormed an Orange line train and robbed several passengers, delivering a few beatings along the way. A teenager was robbed at gunpoint and then stabbed on a Blue Line train in mid February. And the number of people who have had their iPod’s or other electronic devices stolen while on the Metro has spiked by about 40%.

We aren’t naïve enough to think that crime doesn’t exist. Nor are we naïve enough to think that the Metro Police can be everywhere at once. But the thing that we are noticing about many of these reports is not only the lack of police presence, but also the apparent indifference of other Metro personnel. We hear stories about employees who won’t even let victims of beating use the phone, or station attendants who watch beatings take place and do nothing to intervene, or calls on emergency phone boxes that aren’t answered. It’s getting to the point where a quasi-vigilante group like the Guardian Angels is starting to up its presence on Metro, because it appears that they have no faith in the official authorities’ ability to protect passengers.

If you combine this climate of fear with the antiquated sensor system and very real threat of crashes, as well as the crumbling infrastructure of the stations and escalators that have a tendency to suddenly stop working, the DC Metro system resembles not an urban transit system, but rather a large and elaborate game of Russian Roulette. It isn’t necessarily about getting from point A to point B anymore. Now it’s about taking your chances.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people who have been injured due to negligence on transit systems in the Washington, D.C. area. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. has been injured on the Metro or on any of the local transit systems due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

According to the Washington Post:

For the Rev. Nathan J. A. Humphrey, the ordeal began when he stepped onto the base plate of the only functioning escalator at the exit to the station, only to be lifted into the air.

"There was a gigantic noise of grinding, clashing and clanging . . . and a gaping hole coming up," said Humphrey, vicar at St. Paul's Parish in Northwest Washington.

He looked up and saw a woman ahead of him falling backward.

"I remember thinking for one terrible second: She will be pulled underneath by these falling steps,'' Humphrey said. But the escalator jerked to a stop, Humphrey leapt onto stable ground and the woman landed on the steps behind her. Humphrey and another man pulled her to safety.

"She was really lucky; she will have only bruises," Humphrey said.

Lucky, indeed. For those who don’t know what the working machinery of an escalator looks like, please follow this embedded link. It is a series of chains, wheels, gears and sprockets that could easily crush a limb or end a life.

Memo to WMATA: We’re running out of miracles. That is two incidents where nobody was killed, but it was simply a coin toss that made it that way. The pile-up at the bottom of the escalator at L’Enfant Plaza could have just as easily ended up with a broken neck, or somebody getting smothered to death. The collapse of the stairs at Foggy Bottom could have easily resulted in that woman losing her life in an incredibly agonizing fashion. 

How these escalators have fallen into such a state of disrepair is a story that is literally decades long. The condensed version is that since 1991, Metro has been responsible for maintaining and repairing the escalators themselves. Prior to that date, escalator services were provided by either Westinghouse (which is the company that made and installed the escalators,) or Schindler (which is the company that eventually purchased Westinghouse.) The problem appears to have been that WMATA was attempting to create an escalator maintenance division from scratch. The results speak for themselves. Plus, if you combine the fact that they were doing it on the cheap (paying less for workers, meaning less experienced workers were the only ones available to do the job,) it isn’t that much of a surprise that the escalators are in disrepair. You can also factor in the standard WMATA budget woes, which only look to increase since Congress has made attempts to cut off federal funding. And b y “federal funding,” we don’t mean some of it, or a budget cut, but quite literally the entire $150 million in federal funds that was supposed to go to WMATA for repairs, maintenance and upkeep.

Maybe there are other avenues of revenue that WMATA should be exploring, especially since the current Congress seems to have a dire allergy to anything with the word “public” in it. Maybe full train car advertising? Maybe newsstands should be able to operate in the stations they way they do in New York? Maybe a flat rate ride instead of a per destination charge, which would get more people on the subway and possibly increase revenue?

The repairs need to happen. The escalators need to be fixed. The money needs to come from somewhere. But the current situation is untenable. Is only a matter of time before “escalator malfunction injuries” become “escalator malfunction deaths.”

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has been injured due to no fault of their own while on the premises of a Metro facility or mode of public transportation. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured due to negligence on the part of a WMATA driver, technician or security guard, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

According to the Washington Post:

For the Rev. Nathan J. A. Humphrey, the ordeal began when he stepped onto the base plate of the only functioning escalator at the exit to the station, only to be lifted into the air.

"There was a gigantic noise of grinding, clashing and clanging . . . and a gaping hole coming up," said Humphrey, vicar at St. Paul's Parish in Northwest Washington.

He looked up and saw a woman ahead of him falling backward.

"I remember thinking for one terrible second: She will be pulled underneath by these falling steps,'' Humphrey said. But the escalator jerked to a stop, Humphrey leapt onto stable ground and the woman landed on the steps behind her. Humphrey and another man pulled her to safety.

"She was really lucky; she will have only bruises," Humphrey said.

Lucky, indeed. For those who don’t know what the working machinery of an escalator looks like, please follow this embedded link. It is a series of chains, wheels, gears and sprockets that could easily crush a limb or end a life.

Memo to WMATA: We’re running out of miracles. That is two incidents where nobody was killed, but it was simply a coin toss that made it that way. The pile-up at the bottom of the escalator at L’Enfant Plaza could have just as easily ended up with a broken neck, or somebody getting smothered to death. The collapse of the stairs at Foggy Bottom could have easily resulted in that woman losing her life in an incredibly agonizing fashion. 

How these escalators have fallen into such a state of disrepair is a story that is literally decades long. The condensed version is that since 1991, Metro has been responsible for maintaining and repairing the escalators themselves. Prior to that date, escalator services were provided by either Westinghouse (which is the company that made and installed the escalators,) or Schindler (which is the company that eventually purchased Westinghouse.) The problem appears to have been that WMATA was attempting to create an escalator maintenance division from scratch. The results speak for themselves. Plus, if you combine the fact that they were doing it on the cheap (paying less for workers, meaning less experienced workers were the only ones available to do the job,) it isn’t that much of a surprise that the escalators are in disrepair. You can also factor in the standard WMATA budget woes, which only look to increase since Congress has made attempts to cut off federal funding. And b y “federal funding,” we don’t mean some of it, or a budget cut, but quite literally the entire $150 million in federal funds that was supposed to go to WMATA for repairs, maintenance and upkeep.

Maybe there are other avenues of revenue that WMATA should be exploring, especially since the current Congress seems to have a dire allergy to anything with the word “public” in it. Maybe full train car advertising? Maybe newsstands should be able to operate in the stations they way they do in New York? Maybe a flat rate ride instead of a per destination charge, which would get more people on the subway and possibly increase revenue?

The repairs need to happen. The escalators need to be fixed. The money needs to come from somewhere. But the current situation is untenable. Is only a matter of time before “escalator malfunction injuries” become “escalator malfunction deaths.”

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has been injured due to no fault of their own while on the premises of a Metro facility or mode of public transportation. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured due to negligence on the part of a WMATA driver, technician or security guard, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

In a nutshell, that’s the difference between a run-of-the-mill accident and an accident caused by negligence. We think it’s an important distinction. While an accident can be an “act of God,” negligence accidents are “acts of man.”

On October 30, the escalator at the L’Enfant Plaza metro station suffered a system failure. According to the Washington Post, the escalator started speeding uncontrollably, which essentially flung all the riders to the ground at the bottom. The entire Metro system was extremely crowded due to the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rally that was taking place on the mall. Just under a million people were riding the trains that day. If anything positive can be taken out of this, it can be that it was a lucky thing that only four people were hurt. Can you imagine what could have happened if the main escalator at Bethesda metro station suddenly sped up? Or the escalator at DuPont Circle? On the most crowded day Metro has had since the Inauguration?

The escalators in the DC Metro systems are notorious for being broken. It is a rare day where a regular commuter can get to work without having to climb up one broken escalator or another. But there is a difference between an escalator not working and an escalator actively malfunctioning while passengers are on it. And what should be mentioned here is that the escalator malfunction at L’Enfant Plaza wasn’t a random occurrence, nor was it unexpected.

A report performed by an independent firm weeks ago concluded that the escalators are dangerous, unstable and in need of repair or replacement. Among some of the more relevant passages:

• Major amounts of oil and lubricant on step treads and risers. Symptomatic of major leak at drive motor / reducer coupling.
• Significant accumulation of metal shavings around hand rail newel areas from worn newel wheels.
• Brake pads worn beyond usable life expectancy and out of adjustment allowing unit to freewheel to stop.
• Numerous switches in safety circuits were dirty, out of adjustment, and ineffective.
• Skirt panels were adjusted too tightly to the steps, creating metal shavings along the step roller tracks in the interior of the unit.
• Hoist ropes severely rouged [corroded] and worn beyond acceptable life expectancy.
• Sheet plastic being used to protect equipment from water intrusion. This is a critical life safety issue.

Metro authorities had this draft in their hands on September 30^th, which was a full month before the accident happened. So how can they make the standard defense against negligence, which is “We simply didn’t know?” They can’t make the claim that the escalator malfunction was a surprise to them when an independent report commissioned by them on the state of their escalators specifically warned that an incident like the October 30^th disaster was likely to happen. The argument could easily be made that WMATA was negligent in maintaining its escalators, and that they knew about the danger that these escalators posed to riders for a full month before the incident took place.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and we are currently offering legal assistance to injury victims all over the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas. If you have been injured due to reasons that were not your fault, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

In a nutshell, that’s the difference between a run-of-the-mill accident and an accident caused by negligence. We think it’s an important distinction. While an accident can be an “act of God,” negligence accidents are “acts of man.”

On October 30, the escalator at the L’Enfant Plaza metro station suffered a system failure. According to the Washington Post, the escalator started speeding uncontrollably, which essentially flung all the riders to the ground at the bottom. The entire Metro system was extremely crowded due to the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rally that was taking place on the mall. Just under a million people were riding the trains that day. If anything positive can be taken out of this, it can be that it was a lucky thing that only four people were hurt. Can you imagine what could have happened if the main escalator at Bethesda metro station suddenly sped up? Or the escalator at DuPont Circle? On the most crowded day Metro has had since the Inauguration?

The escalators in the DC Metro systems are notorious for being broken. It is a rare day where a regular commuter can get to work without having to climb up one broken escalator or another. But there is a difference between an escalator not working and an escalator actively malfunctioning while passengers are on it. And what should be mentioned here is that the escalator malfunction at L’Enfant Plaza wasn’t a random occurrence, nor was it unexpected.

A report performed by an independent firm weeks ago concluded that the escalators are dangerous, unstable and in need of repair or replacement. Among some of the more relevant passages:

• Major amounts of oil and lubricant on step treads and risers. Symptomatic of major leak at drive motor / reducer coupling.
• Significant accumulation of metal shavings around hand rail newel areas from worn newel wheels.
• Brake pads worn beyond usable life expectancy and out of adjustment allowing unit to freewheel to stop.
• Numerous switches in safety circuits were dirty, out of adjustment, and ineffective.
• Skirt panels were adjusted too tightly to the steps, creating metal shavings along the step roller tracks in the interior of the unit.
• Hoist ropes severely rouged [corroded] and worn beyond acceptable life expectancy.
• Sheet plastic being used to protect equipment from water intrusion. This is a critical life safety issue.

Metro authorities had this draft in their hands on September 30^th, which was a full month before the accident happened. So they can’t make the standard defense against negligence, which is “We simply didn’t know.” They can’t make the claim that the escalator malfunction was a surprise to them when an independent report commissioned by them on the state of their escalators specifically warned that an incident like the October 30^th disaster was likely to happen. The argument could be made that WMATA was negligent in maintaining its escalators, and that they knew about the danger that these escalators posed to riders for a full month before the incident took place.

To understand a little about negligence law, please read our understanding negligence page.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and we are currently offering legal assistance to injury victims all over the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas. If you have been injured due to reasons that were not your fault, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

"The most disappointing . . . is when we issue recommendations and those issues do not get corrected. For us, that is a big concern about Metro," she said. Nine NTSB recommendations issued to Metro in July and September, in the aftermath of the accident, remain open, according to NTSB records.

We aren’t exactly sure why Metro is dragging its feet about making these corrections. It might be money. It might be politics. It might be a combination of the two. State politicians in Annapolis and Richmond might have a problem with paying state funds for a transit system that their immediate constituents never use. We can certainly imagine that a state delegate from Lynchburg, Virginia or Havre de Grace, Maryland would fail to see the urgency.

Whatever the reason, WMATA has continued on as if that horrible train accident never happened. We can absolutely assure them that it did. In fact, we have a few injured clients who can verify that on that day in June, there was a catastrophic system failure that resulted in 9 deaths and 76 injuries.

The second serious safety hazard doesn’t involve the trains, but instead involves escalators that allow passengers to safely get in and out of the stations. Specifically speaking, they don’t work, and the scope and size of both the number of breakdowns and the escalators themselves makes this state of affairs an accident waiting to happen.

The Washington, D.C. subway system has 570 escalators. This is more than any other subway system in the world. Due to the fact that this area was built on what was essentially marshland, our subway system has to go very deep underground. The escalator at Wheaton, for instance, goes down 230 feet. Believe it or not, this is actually the longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere. The escalators at Bethesda, DuPont Circle and Woodley Park are also incredibly long. And while the escalators at Rosslyn and Clarendon don’t necessarily set records, they still are long enough to eat up over a full minute to get from the street to the station.

The way we see it, there are two potential dangers with broken escalators. The first would be the hazards involved with these escalators suddenly stopping. The stop wouldn’t even have to be a particularly jarring one for disaster to strike. One person falling down an escalator of that size and length would be catastrophic, not just for the person falling but also for anyone who happens to be on the escalator below the person falling. People can get badly hurt by falling off of a five inch curb on the side of the road, so the idea of someone falling down a crowded 230 foot escalator is so grim that it’s terrifying to think about.

The second danger is not going down, but going up. Metro might not have noticed, but not everyone who rides the subway is spry and athletic. Many of the passengers are elderly and infirm. Making them climb up 230 feet, particularly in heat that reaches upwards of 90 degrees, is something that could adversely affect their health. And if the elevators are broken (as they often are,) many passengers have no choice but to trudge up that enormous incline.

As of this writing, the escalator report for the entire WMATA system lists 62 escalators as being out of service, as well as 8 separate elevators. This reflects very poorly on WMATA. It is inconvenient, stressful, disrespectful of passengers and extremely dangerous. Among the many faults of the DC Metro system, this one is particularly galling.

Greenberg and Bederman is aninjury law firm based in Washington, D.C. We are currently offering legal help to anyone who has been injured due to negligence or poor management by the WMATA. This includes anyone who was injured while riding the subway, or anyone who was injured due to an escalator-related accident. If you or a loved one was injured on the Washington, D.C. subway system in Maryland, Washington, D.C. or Virginia, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

According to Metro Spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein, this motion to dismiss the case was “partial” and “routine:”

“Even if granted, this would not deprive anyone of their day in court or their right to a jury trial. Neither of our motions separately or together seeks dismissal of the suit against Metro in its entirety."

Why bother to file a motion to dismiss at all? What about this lawsuit does WMATA find unfair or excessive? There are nine people who are no longer living because WMATA had not bothered to do proper maintenance on their outdated sensor system. There are sons and daughters, mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who have lost someone due to utter negligence. Which “part” of that does WMATA not understand?

Judging by the progress that they have made in terms of making safety improvements, we suspect that there is a great deal that they don’t understand. They seem to be looking at this disaster not in terms of human life and human suffering, but rather in dollars and cents. It appears to be too expensive to make necessary safety improvements. It appears to be too expensive to compensate the families of the victims fairly. So put off the improvements and repairs. File those motions to dismiss. Just roll the dice and see if you can avoid responsibility altogether.

Call us crazy, but we’re pretty sure that’s not the attitude that a public transportation agency is supposed to take. We’re also pretty sure that anything that involves getting members of the public from one place to another should be as safe as humanly possible. Safety inspections and improvements should not be put off or deliberated. They should be done early and often. The consequences for not doing so became tragically evident exactly one year ago today.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in Washington, D.C. We are currently representing injury victims from the Red Line Metro crash, and are also offering legal help to anyone who has been injured while riding any form of public transportation in the D.C. area. If you or a loved one has been injured on a bus, streetcar or subway in Maryland, Virginia or D.C, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.