NTSB investigators now believe the deadly crash was caused by engineer Brandon Bostian’s “loss of situational awareness”, CBS News reported.
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Investigators suggested Tuesday that Bostian was so consumed by radio chatter about the rock-throwing that he didn’t realize he was approaching the sharp curve.
Duy Nguyen, 40, of Teaneck, N.J, speaks with reporters about his experienced, and injury, while he was a passenger aboard an Amtrak passenger train that derailed in Philadelphia a year ago, during the National Transportation Safet.
Bostian told investigators he couldn’t remember some of what happened that night – probably because of a blow to the head suffered when his locomotive overturned, NTSB medical officer Mary Pat McKay.
Ahead of the derailment Bostian had the train moving at a speed that would have been appropriate on a stretch of track that followed the curve.
They believe Bostian might have been disoriented and sped up on a risky curve before reaching the straight portion of track on May 12, 2015.
FRA chief Sarah Feinberg said the regulator continues to look for ways to keep passengers safe in derailments and to find solutions to “these persistent engineering safety challenges”. Four of them were ejected through emergency windows that dislodged as the cars slid on their sides, investigators said.
Engineer Brandon Bostian was apparently so focused on the rock-throwing he heard about over the radio that he lost track of where he was and accelerated full-throttle to 106 miles per hour as he went into a sharp curve with a 50 miles per hour limit, investigators said at an NTSB hearing convened to pinpoint the cause of the May 12, 2015, tragedy.
According to the investigation’s findings, a SEPTA commuter train had been struck with rocks minutes before the AMTRAK accident, shattering the windshield and getting glass in the SEPTA engineer’s face.
“While Congress has given railroads at least three more years to fully implement PTC, the public deserves it sooner”, she said.
“(Crash investigators) found that the accident could have been avoided if positive train control or another control system had been in place to enforce the permanent speed restriction of 50 miles per hour”, officials at the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday in a statement. The NTSB’s assessment is that Bostian “went, in a matter of seconds, from distraction to disaster”.
Since the accident, positive train control has been switched on in Amtrak’s northeastern corridor. The ride from the train station in Philadelphia to the site of the derailment was 11 minutes.
Early in the investigation much of the focus was on if the train had been hit by a rock or another projectile.
Dinh-Zarr unsuccessfully argued that positive train control should be listed as a main cause of the crash, not simply a contributing factor. An Amtrak spokesman said the agency will comment after the hearing.
“About the same time I put the train into emergency, I recall hoping that the train would not tip completely over”, Bostian told investigators.
Bostian was known among his friends for his safety-mindedness and love of railroading.
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“It is a world in which the engineer relies in part on the memorized details of the route and a world in which a loss of awareness can take a awful toll”, Hart said in his opening remarks as the board meets to detail the probable cause of the derailment. Some of the posts lamented that railroads hadn’t been fast enough to adopt technology that can prevent trains from going over the speed limit. A 56-mile stretch from New Rochelle, New York, to New Haven, Connecticut, is owned by other entities and is planned to have automatic controls installed by a deadline at the end of 2018.
