Blaming the Metro-North train crash on the train's engineer is wrong. This is why
Regarding "Metro-North primarily responsible for fiery 2015 Valhalla crash that killed 6, jury finds," lohud.com, July 16:
I just read the article which found Metro-North Railroad and the engineer of Train 659 63% responsible for the accident at the crossing at Valhalla, New York in February 2015. I’m shocked and dismayed that the jury could, first of all, place any blame on the engineer, let alone come up with percentages of blame. I was a locomotive engineer for the Penn Central, Conrail and NJ Transit Railroads almost 33 years. I also trained engineers for NJ Transit as well as taught operating rules classes. After retiring from NJ Transit, I was a safety inspector for the Federal Railroad Administration for nine years, and would have been called to that accident if I didn’t retire in December 2014.
It is incomprehensible for me to understand why the jury could not understand that the engineer could not stop the train in time to strike a car that should never have been on the crossing. The train was operating at a speed just below the maximum authorized speed and the car should not have been on the crossing, period. The driver of the SUV also had enough time to exit the car. Why didn’t she?
Locomotive engineers have very few options
Locomotive engineers are powerless to stop a train in situations like the one at Valhalla simply due to the laws of physics. The speed, weight of a train and steel wheel on steel rail configuration of the rail system make it that way.
While working as a locomotive engineer in the early 1980s, I struck a 19-year-old male who jumped in front of my train; there was no way I could stop in time. About one year later, I struck a 20-year-old male who was apparently intoxicated. Once again, even with sounding the horn and applying the train brakes in emergency, I could not stop in time. How anyone could place even partial blame on me for those incidents is beyond me. The same goes for the engineer of Train 659.
As for the tragedy of the passengers who were fatally injured, my understanding is that when the auto was struck at the crossing, and was shoved down the track, the third rail somehow buckled and wound up crashing into the passenger compartment of the train. If the car had not been on the crossing, nothing would have happened.
I didn’t quit my job after striking those two individuals but you better believe that I thought about those incidents every time I passed through Elizabeth and Avenel, New Jersey. And that goes for every single locomotive engineer who strikes a trespasser or unauthorized vehicle on the railroad right-of-way who should never have been there in the first place.
Paul Hraska is a retired locomotive engineer who lives in Red Hook, New York.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Metro North train crash should not be blamed on enineer
