(The Associated Press distributed the following article on October 7.)
WASHINGTON — A collision of trains in California last year that killed two people and injured dozens was caused by a freight crew’s failure to heed a signal, federal safety officials said Tuesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board reiterated its call for the rail industry to come up with crash-avoidance technology, something the NTSB has pushed since 1990.
“We have the best engineers in the country. Let’s get going,” NTSB Chairwoman Ellen Engleman said after the board meeting. “At some point in time, you have to quit talking and start doing.”
Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Warren Flatau said the agency planned to issue standards for such systems later this year.
“We believe it is going to greatly enable and accelerate the pace at which railroads proceed in further developing or installing these types of systems,” said Flatau, whose agency has spent more than $66 million on developing the technology.
Engleman and other NTSB officials said crash-avoidance technology could have prevented the April 2002 collision of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train and a Southern California Regional Rail Authority’s Metrolink commuter rail train in Placentia, Calif., about 30 miles outside Los Angeles.
The board found that the freight train’s two-member crew failed to obey a signal warning them to slow down. Their train crashed into the commuter train, which was stopped on the tracks.
Two people were killed in the crash and 162 people were hospitalized. The crash caused an estimated $4.6 million in damages. A third person, who was injured in the collision, died in June.
“While we have not had time to review the entire report, based on the report’s synopsis, this incident was due to human error on the part of the freight train crew in that they failed to comply with the stop signal,” said BSNF spokesman Richard Russack.
The FRA and the railroad industry have been testing crash-avoidance technology in recent years. The BNSF announced in July that it was installing and testing technology along a 135-mile stretch of track in Illinois.
The test uses the global positioning system to let the train engineer know, through a computer screen mounted in the locomotive, of any hazards along the tracks. If the engineer fails to respond, the computer automatically stops the train.
In 1998, another computer-GPS system began a test along a 123-mile Union Pacific track between Chicago and Springfield, Ill. Amtrak and Alaska Railroad have tested radio-based systems, and tests of other collision-avoidance technology are under way in Wisconsin and Oregon.
“You have to make sure something works before you install it,” said Tom White, spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, an industry group. “You also have to make sure it’s cost-effective. It’s not off-the-shelf technology.”
White estimated it would cost $7 billion to $8 billion to install such technology nationwide.
In the California crash, the two deaths and several injuries were caused by the passengers hitting tables installed in front of seats for commuters to work on, the NTSB said.
The Transportation Department is studying the design of passenger rail cars, including looking at these tables, which have been installed in more than 300 cars on 11 railroads.
The NTSB can suggest regulations but has no power to compel federal agencies to follow its recommendations.