NTSB probe of deadly crash focuses on engineer, black box
- by Erica Wilson
- in Local
- — Oct 2, 2016
At about 8:45 a.m., a train traveling too fast had barreled down the tracks with such speed that it plowed into a barrier and went airborne into the station.
"Trains like the one in Thursday's crash also are equipped with a system that sounds a loud alarm and eventually stops the train if the engineer goes 15 to 20 seconds without touching the controls. We hope to give you some information from the interviews tomorrow", Dinh-Zarr said.
HOBOKEN, N.J. (AP) - Here's what is known about the investigation into a commuter train crash that killed one person and injured more than 100 others Thursday in Hoboken, New Jersey.
But investigators are struggling to extract a recorder from the forward-facing camera in the badly mangled first auto of the train without damaging it, the NTSB said Friday.
Officials urged there be no rush to judgment on the circumstances.
Christie said it will take federal investigators seven to 10 days because to the sheer level of damage created when the train slammed into the station. NBC also reported NTSB investigators did not find any anomalies with the tracks leading into the station.
"Why that is, we don't know", New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said. Some suggest the speed of the train that crashed was three times that before it crashed.
In the meantime, the NTSB has struggled to download data from the event recorder recovered from the locomotive.
Thomas Gallagher, the man at the controls of the NJ Transit train that plowed into a station Thursday, is a married father and veteran engineer who has worked in the rail industry for nearly three decades, officials say.
The official would not disclose what Mr Gallagher said but described him as co-operative.
"I just told her to fight for your breath, think about your family, think about your friends, think about tomorrow", said Rahman Perkins, a crash bystander who comforted the dying de Kroon.
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Gallagher, a 29-year veteran of the railway who is married with two daughters, has a deep love for driving trains, said Penny Jones, 72, one of his neighbours in suburban New Jersey.
29, 2016 photo provided by a passenger who was on the train when it crashed shows wreckage at the Hoboken, N.J. rail station. The NJ Transit portion of the Hoboken station remained closed Friday, slowing commutes.
Hoboken, which is NJ Transit's fifth-busiest station with 15,000 boardings per weekday, is just across the Hudson River from New York City.
Christie says the only thing clear so far is that the train came into the station too fast before crashing through barriers and stopping against the terminal building.
But if funding is one problem, another constraint is the plethora of railroad companies, which use different types of locomotives and different communication protocols, which need to be standardised.
But most rail companies were unable to meet the deadline as the system is expensive and complex to install. The cause could be human error or technical failure, Cuomo said. The derailment resulted from a loss of situational awareness by the train's engineer after his attention was diverted to an emergency involving another train, the agency said.
"We will look at whether there was positive train control installed and all of the aspects related to that before we come to any conclusions".
Passenger Bhagyesh Shah said the train was crowded, particularly the first two cars, because they make for an easy exit into the Hoboken station. "No matter what, this is something they'll have to deal with the rest of their lives", she said, noting police officers were stationed outside the Gallagher house.
"(I) feel like the world stopped for some moments", Marques said.
"All railroads have to have the technology in place by 2018, but many commuter rails are behind", he explained on Morning Edition.
David Rangel, president of the Modoc Railroad Academy in Marion, Illinois, said putting another person in the engineer's cab - a practice that is common in airplane cockpits and many freights line - could help prevent accidents should the engineer become incapacitated.