Metro-North train collides with car at grade crossing

[Devil's Advocate]

How about if we start putting up signs at crossings with pictures of maimed and charred bodies of folks who were too careless to stay off the tracks? How about we put up names and logos of commercial businesses that operate trucks and machinery which foul the tracks of oncoming trains? I'm not sure if this sort of thing would work but I'd support giving it a try. Sometimes the threat of shame works even better than the threat of death.

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

Someone on WNBC explained sensors that have been around for about 20 years that can detect a vehicle on the tracks at a crossing and flash a signal in the cab, hopefully in time for the Engineer to stop. But he added very few crossings have been equipped with them.

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

As for Ellen Brody, I never like to speak ill of the dead but this is a mistake you as a driver just can't make. There's no excuse for being caught on the track when the gates come down. At a lot of grade crossings in this area there are signs to the effect of "do not stop on tracks", but my experience is that a person who doesn't have the common sense to already know that is not going to be persuaded by a little sign. People learn how to drive when they're teenagers and by and large they maintain whatever habits they learn at that time until the day they die. They may slow down a little bit and become more absent-minded as they get older, but they need to be taught the laws and proper driving techniques when they're young or they're just going to keep doing the wrong things because they "never had a problem before". Until they finally do, at which point it's too late both for them and anyone else they inadvertently kill.

When I took Drivers Ed back in the mid 70s in Illinois, our Instructors warned us during the Wheel portion of the State Exam, the Examiner WILL instantly fail you if you fail to at least look both ways at an otherwise cold rail crossing. Fortunately I remember that and passed with flying colors. I think it is time to place even stronger emphasis on this and any time a driver has "trouble" remembering, a hefty fine and suspension of license will help him or her remember.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

 

[afigg]

NY Times article on grade crossings accidents in the NYC region for the commuter railroads: Rail Crossing Accidents Decline Nationwide, but Less So in New York Region. From posts I saw on Second Ave Sagas, there are no grade crossings on the electrified segment of the Hudson River Line and none of course on the New Haven line. But there are a bunch on the Harlem line, many of which will be difficult and expensive to grade separate if a decision to do so were to be made by the politicians in the wake of this accident. LIRR has many grade crossings in its 3rd rail territory and long stalled plans to separate some of them.

Some excerpts from the NYT article:

Accidents at railroad crossings happen with surprising regularity in the region. Since 2003, there have been 125 grade-crossing accidents on New Jersey Transit lines, 105 on the Long Island Rail Road and 30 on Metro-North Railroad, according to the latest available Federal Railroad Administration data. More than half of those 260 accidents resulted in injuries or deaths. In all, 73 people were killed and 148 injured.

Nationally, the numbers of accidents and fatalities at rail crossings have fallen steadily, as grade crossings have been eliminated and safety improvements made, according to safety groups. There were 3,085 such accidents across the country that killed 371 people in 2004. Those figures dropped to 2,096 accidents that killed 288 people in 2013.

The last accident that took place at the crossing occurred in 1984, according to the railroad administration’s data. A Metro-North train struck a truck, also at the height of the evening rush, killing the 21-year-old driver, Gerard Dunne, a new father who had been responding to a call for work, his sister Barbara Kehoe said.

Metro-North has 126 grade crossings, Long Island Rail Road has 294, and New Jersey Transit has 330, according to the transit agencies.

In an interview on NY1 on Wednesday morning, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that eliminating all grade crossings would be prohibitively costly. “In theory it’s a nice idea,” he said. “In practicality, do we have the money, do we have the time? And is it one of the top priority safety projects? I would say no.”

Yet, Cuomo wants to spend $500 million and up on a poorly located Air Train connection to LaGuardia. This accident was bad enough that there could be public pressure on the Governor and state legislature to spend funds to close or separate some of the grade crossings.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Unfortunately here in the Peoples Republic of Texas, you don't even have to take an actual driving test to get your license! Just take an approved drivers training course, pass the State written test on rules and signs and then hit the road!

Common sense tells you to Stop! Look! and Listen! @ Grade Crossings, but common sense among drivers seems to be in short supply now- a-days!!!

 

[spacecadet]

I think it is time to place even stronger emphasis on this and any time a driver has "trouble" remembering, a hefty fine and suspension of license will help him or her remember.

The problem is there is basically no enforcement in this area. It's already illegal to stop on the tracks, just as it's illegal to speed, fail to use turn signals, weave in and out of traffic, and a lot of other things that people do routinely on the roads here. I'm convinced that some people don't even *know* this stuff is illegal, because they've just never been so much as warned over it in decades, and in some cases they have never even had driver's education anywhere in the United States. In NY, you can get a license anywhere and transfer it over. (I'm not saying that's true of Ellen Brody.)

Driver's education is the only answer, combined with strict testing when you either obtain *or renew* your license. I don't see how anyone stops on the tracks even if there's a car in front of them unless they just don't even know they're not supposed to do it.

 

[Ryan]

Red light cameras at grade crossings with $1,000 fines. Start hitting these idiots in the wallet and maybe they'll stop.

 

[TinCan782]

The two things that I think the investigation's going to focus on are:

1) Why this person was on the track and what more can be done to keep people off the tracks

2) Why the third rail pierced the train car, and what can be done to prevent that

Arguably #2 is more important. Trains hit cars all the time; it shouldn't happen but it does and if you've got hundreds of grade crossings on the line, then the equipment needs to be built for that contingency. Obviously in this case, the track was not. I don't know what the answer is to that - maybe a combination of securing the third rail better, plus burying the ends in the ground? (From what I remember, at grade crossings there's a gap in the rail and so the car probably "caught" one end.)

As for Ellen Brody, I never like to speak ill of the dead but this is a mistake you as a driver just can't make. There's no excuse for being caught on the track when the gates come down. At a lot of grade crossings in this area there are signs to the effect of "do not stop on tracks", but my experience is that a person who doesn't have the common sense to already know that is not going to be persuaded by a little sign. People learn how to drive when they're teenagers and by and large they maintain whatever habits they learn at that time until the day they die. They may slow down a little bit and become more absent-minded as they get older, but they need to be taught the laws and proper driving techniques when they're young or they're just going to keep doing the wrong things because they "never had a problem before". Until they finally do, at which point it's too late both for them and anyone else they inadvertently kill.

In one of the news photos I saw of this accident, a crossbuck, the red lights were flashing and below..a sign, "DO NOT STOP ON TRACKS" was predominately displayed. The smoldering train in the background.

 

[KmH]

The average driver does not read traffic control signs.

The average driver is not fully engaged with the task of driving the car when the car is moving.

As level 4 autonomous (self-driving) cars eliminate the human driver these types of incidents will dramatically decease in number.

 

[Dutchrailnut]

think fines will work, when current penalty of death by train does not phase them ???

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

think fines will work, when current penalty of death by train does not phase them ???

Add a few months of License Suspension to a hefty fine and that should put the fear of God into them as they will have no place to use their Cell or Texting Phone

 

[Paulus]

think fines will work, when current penalty of death by train does not phase them ???

Add a few months of License Suspension to a hefty fine and that should put the fear of God into them as they will have no place to use their Cell or Texting Phone

Up to 80% of those with suspended or revoked licenses continue driving anyhow

 

[Ryan]

think fines will work, when current penalty of death by train does not phase them ???

Yes. As I mentioned elsewhere, humans are really, really bad at qualifying low likelihood, high impact risk events. We're much better at avoiding high likelihood (near certain with cameras), but lower impact risks.

 

[CHamilton]

The Failed Dream of the Easy Commute

Just as New York State highways are the creaking remnants of a vanished dream, its rail system also seems stuck in the past. In the aftermath of this most recent accident, we learned that only two of the nation’s eighteen state or local railways, Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road, operate on a third-rail system powered by overhead lines. And while the frequency of accidents at crossings has lessened in other parts of the country, they remain hazardous in New York. (Metro-North has a hundred and twenty-five grade crossings in addition to the one that Ellen Brody blundered through.)

 

[John Bredin]

What is stranger is that according to some reports, specifically from an interview with a driver in a car that was just behind Ms. Brody's car, that she was caught on the wrong side of the gate but not on the track. She checked for damage to the rear of the SUV and then proceeded to drive onto the track! If that is true that is truly bizarre behavior!

Sorry to revive a thread from over a year ago, but today I read an article of interest on this point (which I found while googling the Tesla Model 3 and unusual locations/styles of gear-selectors). The gist is that the driver may have intended to engage "reverse" but in a new car with an unusual gear-selector she engaged "drive" instead. A bit of nightmare fuel if true!http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/02/can-unfamiliarity-with-a-gear-shift-lever-cause-a-tragedy/index.htm

 

[Ryan]

Good find! That's pretty plausible - it's a shame that something that should be so simple ends up killing folks.

 

[Bob Dylan]

This is another area where Auto Standards need to be mandated by the Government for Safety reasons!

Designers love to create things that are different and avant guarde, but never take Safety and practical use in the Real World into consideration!

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

The Failed Dream of the Easy Commute

Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road, operate on a third-rail system powered by overhead lines. A

Did I just read what I thought I read? I hope they mean third rail supplied via "mains power" as they'd call it in the UK rather than a dedicated power plant.

 

[jis]

The Failed Dream of the Easy Commute

Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road, operate on a third-rail system powered by overhead lines. A

Did I just read what I thought I read? I hope they mean third rail supplied via "mains power" as they'd call it in the UK rather than a dedicated power plant.

That sentence in the article makes no sense, and its relevance in the context of the article is also questionable.

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

That sentence in the article makes no sense, and its relevance in the context of the article is also questionable.

That's why it stuck out to me. Grade crossings are a problem whether diesel, third rail or catenary.

 

[Thirdrail7]

On 4th anniversary of Valhalla Metro-North crash, third rail is focus of litigation


https://www.lohud.com/story/news/investigations/2019/01/31/valhalla-crash-anniversary-third-rail/2720337002/

Lawyers for the estates of those who died say were it not for Metro-North’s faulty design of the third rail, everyone in the lead car would have survived and nine others wouldn’t have been injured. The remaining 625 passengers, riding in the seven cars behind the lead, were not injured.

“But for the dangerous design of the third rail, NO ONE INSIDE THE TRAIN would have gotten hurt, NOT EVEN A SCRATCH,” attorney Natascia Ayers wrote in court papers filed in State Supreme Court in Westchester in April.

Killed were Walter Liedtke, 69, and Eric Vandercar, 53, both of Bedford Hills; Aditya Tomar, 41, of Danbury, Conn., Robert Dirks, 36, of Chappaqua and Joseph Nadol, 42 of Ossining.

Metro-North attorney Philip DiBerardino said Ayers' claim about the third rail design is off the mark.

"Plaintiffs' bald statement is unsupported by any evidence, and, as such, amounts to sheer speculation," DiBerardino wrote in May.

Metro-North says Brody is to blame for the accident for illegally stopping on a grade crossing equipped with warning devices, flashing lights and automatic gates that were all in good working order. The railroad, along with the Town of Mount Pleasant, is suing her husband, Alan Brody, the administrator of his wife’s estate.

Brody, meanwhile, is suing Metro-North and Mount Pleasant, claiming his wife was trapped on an unsafe crossing and unaware she was on railroad tracks. His lawyer, Philip Russotti, says a faulty signal system didn’t provide cars enough time to clear an intersection at the crossing.

In 2017, the NTSB concluded Brody’s actions caused the crash, while noting the third rail design led to the loss of life.

The battle wages on....for toy soldiers.

 

[Acela150]

The best part of this whole thing is simple. The driver was found to be at fault for the entire incident. And who do people sue? Metro North....... 

 

[daybeers]

While the driver was indeed at fault, the third rail design was incredibly flawed and Metro-North should pay for the unnecessary loss of life.

 

[jis]

I think the phrase "incredibly flawed" is maybe a bit shrill, since this sort of third rail has operated without this sort of failure for many many decades through many grade crossing accidents. This was a very unique failure mode, and indeed lessons should be learned from this and the detailed implementation improved to mitigate this failure mode.

diverting attention away from the legal posturing by all involved ...

I wonder if the tie plates for the third rails have been modified so that they break much quicker under stress. Also, it would seem that rail sections much shorter than 39' with designed for failure tie plates would minimize the risk of the third rail holding together until it pierces into the body of a car. Also, if the brackets holding the rail could somehow have a bias to fail falling away from the track rather than towards the track that might help keep the rail away from the vehicle.

The NTSB report is very informative: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAR1701.pdf

In this case it almost seems like the SUV together with the front truck of the front car, acted as a routing device to route the third rail up and into the rail car. The only way to protect against that would seem to be to somehow protect the start point of the third rail from incursion by a large sliding object while allowing enough gap for the third rail shoe to pass under unhindered. A very tall order perhaps.

Incidentally NTSB claims on page 24 last two lines that LIRR has under running third rail! Someone did not do an adequate job of proofreading and fact checking all claims in the report I guess. Of course this error is not significant in the context of this particular accident, nor does it appear to have had any impact on the recommendations, since all third rail users irrespective of the type essentially got the same directive.

I wonder what came of the recommendations R-17-007 , R-17-008 , R-17-009  and R-17-010 .