Amtrak engineer tested positive for marijuana and opioids in Chester, Pa. train crash

[brooklynite]

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

The engineer on a train that derailed in Chester City last year, killing two, tested positive for drugs after the crash, a federal agency's docket released Thursday reported.

The 47-year-old engineer, Alex Hunter, tested positive for marijuana and opioids, according to a document from the National Transportation Safety Board's docket on the April 6 derailment of Amtrak train 89.

The docket includes hundreds of pages, all the documents the NTSB has used of their investigation into the April 3 crash so far. Later this year the federal agency is expected to release their conclusions on the derailment's cause.

Train 89 was traveling at 106 mph, below the speed restriction in the area of the crash, and the engineer reported seeing no flag men or whistle boards, which might have warned him to the presence of workers on the track, as he neared the work site. He saw a large piece of equipment on an adjacent track and then, seconds later, according to documents, saw the backhoe in his path. He sounded his horn and applied emergency braking, the document states.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/business/Chester-train-crash-files-released-today.html

[tenorly]

1. Any second now,

Some GOP congresscritter will introduce a bill (written by Greyhound or some airline) to disband Amtrak on account of the "rampant drug problem among its staff" or some such.

[LisaM]

2. How many engineers are on these trains? Do they have backup?

The light rail in Seattle has sometimes up to eight cars hooked together going through the tunnel, and I only see ONE person manning the whole thing, even though by my count, there are maybe 500 or more passengers. That doesn't seem like a good ratio.

Whenever these incidents occur, I wonder if they could have been prevented if the staffing level was slightly higher. I had a friend who moved to Germany, and she said that once for a four-hour bus trip, they were slightly delayed because the second driver hadn't gotten there yet. It's a law in Germany that there have to be two drivers on hand.

[brooklynite]

3. Um, the maximum train length on the Seattle light rail is four cars...

...normally no more that three. The stations aren't long enough for more.

[LisaM]

5. I swear I saw a couple that were longer!

Maybe I'm doubling what I saw - they used to all be two (those trains are the bane of my existence during my commute). I stand corrected! Either way, they hold a ton of people and they only seem to be manned by one driver. I don't think that's enough. What if there's an incident, even if it's just medical?

[brooklynite]

6. Should there be an extra driver in every bus or taxi?

Trains, fundamentally, have two controls: forward/backward, and fast/slow. You don't need additional staff to operate them.

[LisaM]

7. And stop/start.

First, it's employment, and I support employment, but what if the guy passes out? Obviously it's not practical to put two drivers in every taxi, maybe not even every city bus, though in Seattle recently a driver did have a heart attack while driving a bus (he later died) and it came within inches of plunging over an overpass on a highway; who knows what would have happened if it had fallen on the moving traffic below? The passengers brought it to a stop, thankfully.

I don't know the real answer to when you need more drivers, but I can't think that having one person responsible for 500 passengers is a good thing no matter what. What if someone overcame the driver? That actually happened in Seattle, too, and a bus did plunge into a ravine, though I realize that's a different scenario and Seattle really isn't full of driverless vehicles plunging off roads!

But the ferry in Staten Island a few years ago, a few others......they are never very forthcoming about whether a second driver would have helped.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. Additional links

Previously at DU:

Amtrak train strikes backhoe, derails with 340-plus on board

Today, at NTSB:

NTSB Accident ID Occurrence Date Location
DCA16FR007 Apr 03, 2016 Chester, PA, United States

Creation Date Last Modified Public Release Date & Time
Jan 23, 2017 Jan 26, 2017 12:01 Jan 26, 2017 12:01

https://dms.ntsb.gov/pubdms/search/hitlist.cfm?docketID=59509&CFID=910533&CFTOKEN=c56f77b54da56fa4-9A647887-F493-6947-429CFAFFF3208A0A