DC Metro Train Report - NTSB

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Greenberg & Bederman

NTSB Report: Too Little Too Late

The government of the United States has any number of agencies that are experts at coming in when it is already too late.

Consider the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. Whenever there is a disaster, either natural or man-made, FEMA comes in and offers assistance and monitors rescue and clean up efforts. Sometimes they perform their tasks admirably and sometimes they don’t, as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina showed us in too vivid detail.

There is also the Securities and Exchange Commission, which prosecutes investors and other financial professionals who engage in fraud and insider trading. They were featured prominently in the investigation of Bernard Madoff, a financier who was recently convicted of running what was nothing more than a billion dollar pyramid scheme.

 

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 23rd. 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.

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