(Los Angeles television station KNBC posted the following Associated Press article on its website on April 9.)
LOS ANGELES — A rash of recent car-train crashes that killed four people in Los Angeles County was a coincidence and motorists were at fault.
A report released Monday by the state Public Utilities Commission examined five vehicle-train crashes in January and it was determined the crossings were not to blame. In each case, the report said, a driver either disobeyed traffic laws or was committing suicide.
The investigation by the PUC, which oversees the safety of California train crossings, found no wrongdoing by rail operators and no evidence of equipment malfunctions at any of the five crossings, four of them in the eastern San Fernando Valley.
Although conceding that four accidents in the San Fernando corridor in a single month is an unusually high number, the report said that the incidents were “a matter of coincidence.”