CHICAGO — Two state agencies have drawn conflicting conclusions about the cause of the fatal 1999 truck-train crash in Bourbonnais, but a more exhaustive investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board will be released Tuesday in Washington, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The federal agency, which has the final investigative word on the derailment that killed 11 people, used forensic analysis, engineering studies and wire-by-wire scrutiny of warning devices in its nearly three-year probe.
Its inquiry included disassembling the crossing signal devices, simulating the wreck using equipment involved in the accident, and analyzing medical data collected from the truck driver.
A report by the Illinois State Police, released Friday, was based primarily on witness interviews and a re-enactment of the accident. It concluded that railroad crossing gates were not working properly. The report said “tests completed and mathematical calculations do not correlate with normal gate operations.”
But looking at the same evidence, the Illinois Commerce Commission decided differently.
“We were certain in our own minds that the crossing gates worked, and the testimony seemed to back that up,” ICC Chairman Richard Mathias said in a telephone interview.
The state police report does not specify what was abnormal about the operation of the gates or give an indication about whether warning lights or crossing gates alerted motorists.
The report also concluded that truck driver John Stokes did not attempt to drive around lowered crossing gates. That finding, which is contrary to some witness accounts, bolsters Stokes’ repeated assertion he did not speed up or drive around the gates.
But the report also states that Stokes was impaired by fatigue or lack of sleep.
Stokes, 61, of Manteno, Ill., has been charged with failure to maintain an updated truck driver’s log book and with exceeding the number of hours he could legally drive within a 24-hour period. Authorities determined that Stokes had been on the road for 30 hours, triple the federal limit, at the time of the March 15, 1999, accident.
He previously had numerous citations for speeding and other violations.
According to the state police report, Stokes had just collected a load of steel reinforcing rods on his flatbed trailer at the nearby Birmingham Steel plant and drove east onto the tracks past red flashing warning lights at 15 to 20 m.p.h. The report said the crossing gates descended as Stokes crossed the tracks.
The side rear of his truck was struck about 9:45 p.m. by an Amtrak train traveling south at 79 m.p.h., a legal speed for that stretch of track.
The impact caused the train to derail and slide about 500 feet into a pair of parked boxcars. Eleven people were killed, 122 people were injured and the accident caused about $14 million in property damage.
Though it was released only days ago, the state police report was finished by March 2000, barely a year after the accident.
The federal transportation board has given no indication of its findings, but it tends to cite combinations of factors in mishaps with variables such as speed, visibility and possible equipment malfunction or human error.
The NTSB report, compiled by its staff, will be delivered to a five-member board, which is not bound to accept the conclusions and may amend them during the Tuesday hearing.
The board held fact-finding hearings on the accident in September 1999. The meetings were noteworthy for Stokes’ refusal to participate–though he had spoken previously to investigators–and for conflicting witness testimony that seemed to underscore the uncertainty about how the accident occurred.