Washington-Area Metro Crash: at least 6 fatalities, probably more
NTSB takes reins of Metro crash inquiry - baltimoresun.com
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What do you think about this? The push for expanding public transportation is something I support, but reading about all of the problems encountered just because of WMATA's lack of attention to safety and training is somewhat terrifying and discouraging when it comes to expanding public transportation across the US. I am sure that the number of fatalities from car accidents in the DC area is higher than the number of fatalities resulting from public transportation crashes/accidents, but there's something about a large-scale wreck with many fatalities that is just terrifying to me. What's your take? What would you like to see happen from here? |
According to a link on Drudge, the toll is up to 9. Just keeps getting better and better, eh?
The thing that worries me is that THIS SHOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED. The CTA here in Chicago runs the same kind of software that's supposed to keep this exact scenario from happening. The software knows where the trains are in relationship to one another and keeps them a minimum distance apart (200 feet here if I remember right). We had an accident about 6 or 7 years ago here where one Brown Line train rear ended another one on elevated tracks and derailed both. In a city where an El car has fallen off the tracks downtown in living memory (I know someone who was in a different car on the same train), that's a pretty big deal. As I understand it, there have to be multiple failures, human, computer and mechanical, to happen. In places like DC and Chicago (add New York and Boston to that list too), light rail is just the most convenient way to get around the city. In Chicago, a blog called The CTA Tattler basically had a little addendum to their regular post wishing all the DC victims well but making no other note. And I think that's how most regular riders not in DC will feel about it, even though there seems to be a very real possibility that it could happen here. |
It's much easier to cover this one event then cover the 100 or so people who died in motor vehicle accidents yesterday.
Then again, how did this happen? I rode on the red line a few months ago and I thought there were no problems. |
Its sounding like there was a brake malfunction. The lead car of the trailing train (as I understand it) was 2 months late for brake maintenance. There may also have been some operator error, but that's still very theoretical. A lack of brakes would pretty much negate the software AND a fully attentive driver if they were going too fast on a curve.
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Jazz, thanks for making that update before I did.
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I'm really sorry to hear this. I imagine the Washington metro is far more complex than the Lisbon one, but I have never heard of anything like this here. The worst we get is people falling on the line (some are suicides). And it's not very common. This is appalling. Definitely need to go over security procedures and staff training it seems.
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