(The following story by Joshua Robin appeared on Newsday?s website on December 2.)
NEW YORK — Transit officials said yesterday that they have found no technical problems in a subway car that dragged a woman four feet along the platform Sunday when she caught her coat in the door.
A spokesman for NYC Transit said tests showed the door’s sensors worked properly when subway conductors were given clearance to move the train. That is because the doors are not programmed to sense material as thin as a coat, said the spokesman, Charles Seaton.
Seaton said Lucy Desmangles, 49, tried holding open the doors with her hand on a re-routed No. 5 train at the 14th Street and Seventh Avenue station about 1:30 p.m. Sunday. Desmangles managed to remove her hand, but a coat sleeve somehow got stuck.
The doors would have sensed her hand, Seaton said.
The train started moving with her coat stuck in the door, dragging her about four feet. Desmangles, a home health care attendant, freed herself by taking off her coat, but dislocated her right shoulder, her son, Kennedy, said yesterday. She was treated and released from St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Drug and alcohol results from the train crew were pending yesterday, Seaton said.
Kennedy Desmangles said the accident could have been prevented had NYC Transit relied less on automated systems. The train was an R142, which first started rolling in 2000.
But Deirdre Parker, a Transit spokeswoman, said the newer trains have the same number of crew members. Parker added that, like on older trains, conductors on the R142s control the opening and closing of doors. Doors on the newer cars are more sensitive than older models.
There have been eight side-door draggings from January through last October – a decrease of 17 from the same time period in 2002, transit officials said.